Books:The Moral Choice:
Johann, Robert O.
work, as his last novel Falconer made light, we are here and not there, yet. the lights of other haunted cottages ...
...be without...
...Ethics exists as an effort to evitably system-dependent, the author well as the illuminating perspectives see what does and does not befit per- wants to defend their objective character...
...some sense with man's nature as man, if founding fathers...
...sense of humor can deeply enjoy any "hazai experienced love...
...creative imagination, acre and oughts is born in response according to which ethical norms are inindividual and group experience...
...ogy for more surely acquiring it...
...I wish grounds for acting morally...
...As he himself remarks, ",We do moods, social roles...
...Finally, there credness...
...The Moral Choice jective...
...UbraryJoumal 304 pages $15.95 CONSCIENCE r Survival and Dignity in an Age of Expertise Please send me the books indicated...
...No other short story in will be left for the August tenants of wha ously religious in design...
...that frequently not know 'from the neck up...
...If our ethical POLITICS AND HISTORY Selected Essays by Raymond Aron Collected, translated, and edited by MIRIAM BERNHEIM CONANT These brilliant essays, most of them never Ci!icafioinv~r~ before available in English, present a superb introduction to the work of Raymond Aron, the internationally known journalist, sociologist, philosopher, and historian...
...attenti4 light...
...as he The One not only needs it, one struggles for counterpart, he divorces, and the story has said, "We can cherish nothing less quite i it...
...411...
...Green- sadly, for those without, humor and its relatiN ways represents the Holy Spirit...
...resour( pal beliefs...
...Obvi- chological analysis of Hamilton's ear- He successfully fought for the honor of liest years convinced him that Hamilton storming a British redoubt at Yorktown ously, a rule of conduct need not be universally followed to be a valid moral had experienced such squalor and be- but his reckless bravery brought no honrule...
...Noting that his argument is not Remini, two of the finest practicing biog- ington was at best an ambivalent one for based on a claim of the universality of the raphers, have long associations with their Hamilton, Flexner reasons...
...The narrator discovers a boy's other risk is the risk to be hilarious, a risk from m specific...
...He has said in an interview, scrawl, "My father is a rat," hidden on that the truly pompous regard as light- author "The religious experience is very much a comer baseboard...
...It is, to be sure, not value of persons and their environof today's intellectuals, he has no doubt without serious flaws (see below), but no ment...
...Every artist's endeavor de- 'realizes that the Greenwoods who had Perhaps those last lines sound faitly son, a mands an implicit faith-commitment to a rented the cottage the previous summer cosmic or even pompous, but it is a indivic world he hopes will reward it, but have left ominous moral baggage be- generous risk that Cheever takes...
...There is a welhub and nine spokes...
...Less than two years after landing befits persons as persons...
...of coptss science, philosophy, and education-and its implica- THE TECHNOLOGICAL CONSCIENCE (930610-8) tions for the humanist tradition...
...This means case fatal as well) experiences with there was a war," he wistfully wrote a that the morally right action is not what Aaron Burr...
...Both fought in the Re- Already at twelve, he realized that miliquestion, our barbarian friend has no volution.'Both had fateful (in Hamilton's tary glory was one possibility...
...are filters, socially and intrapersonally The scope of The Moral Choice is thus Having said all this, however, I must derived, that stand between us and what quite impressive...
...The ture, grounds, and meaning of the moral With The Moral Choice, Daniel upshot is a brightly written, wide- enterprise...
...First, there is that the reason why even good histo- Daniel C. M aguire an introductory section in which the aurians are often confused about the nature thor stresses the contemporary need for a of historical knowledge is because they Doubleday, $10.95 [477 pp...
...Actually, however, I think he is namely, of a liberated and liberal Ameriwhich Maguire's own position raises but really less interested in basic cognitional can Catholic intellectual...
...This, in the context, is absurd...
...paragraphs on normative relativism notwithstanding...
...From no other which he nowhere really tackles (his few theory applied to ethics than in a kind of perspective would it look quite the same...
...of the Revolution and joined Washingmade explicit a few paragraphs later (p...
...Where this valuableness is work points, with all its stress on the is a catch-all section (Chap...
...James Thomas Flexner and Robert ton's staff...
...Yet each, like Edward Gibbon Hamilton found in the aristocratic and says, "lacking universal knowledge on the steps of Ara Coeli, had epiphanies beleaguered Washington a surrogate in researching these studies...
...The findings of the psycho- But it is also, often enough, strangely comes quite problematic...
...as to them...
...In exploring its meaning, we are that we do indeed know in such matters, one interested in ethics can fail to learn simultaneously exploring the meaning of that our moral judgments are genuinely from it...
...But humor, certainly as distort toward brightness, is very nearly destroying his relationship -with his wife often as tragedy, shocks us into truth...
...seaside house with another wife: and the earth-shaking love that draws us erial tt Unfortunately, despite that inviting The shore is curved, and I can see to one another...
...The well a . Cheever has been more religiously hind...
...Equally, if not more now confess my disappointment in the is" (p...
...across documents so revealing...
...objectivity of our "knowledge" bepresentation...
...it is rather early in life thrown upon their own re- in New York, Hamilton had his wish...
...barbarians, could ALTHOUGH -we associate Alexander wounds...
...Having a relative matter...
...Name Stanley's thought ranks with those rare intellects who can Address integrate vast domains of learning and bring them to bear on major ethical and social issues...
...Unlike so many recently in this field...
...And that's the point at separated from his aristocratic, ne'er- no love for country, which in the late issue...
...from which it can be carried out (here the sons in all of their marvelous and or what he calls "ethical realism...
...bound up in "most psychologically troubled of the were always stillborn...
...Hamilton's dreams of military glory tion must be universal, i.e...
...It is, indeed, as I have described it: have no doubt that'it is, the presumed erial that Maguire has integrated into his bright, striking, talented, even showy...
...And is our sense on the bly untrammeled by life's more sordid reasonable man, has rented a summer of the universality of suffering so tive ph confusions, betray his sincere Episco- cottage for his family...
...But this is precisely a form of Hamilton and Andrew Jackson with Immensely ambitious, Hamilton's opcultural relativism...
...Gradually, he inescapable...
...But Cheever's my memory captures better w:iat theolo- or the people who come next' year...
...resources available for this task (e.g...
...behavior, then, lacking the experience in merely 4 decade...
...There against...
...analysis, they have never figured out its foundation and develop a methodol- III) in which the author explores the nawhat knowledge is...
...all that we distort our vision and must be guarded and unfortunately, in many cases, still are is involved in our knowing...
...It seems wood's dreams...
...The whiteness of soon the narrator begins to dream other of the myriad of human sensations...
...The relationship with Wash75...
...Robert 0. Johann both because of the pressing issues conThe same could be said of most contem- fronting us (Chap...
...But the rational basis of moral ac- trayal in his boyhood that it left him the ors...
...Then in great decognitive...
...Flexner set father, he also fought to remain decould make such a claim" (which, by the way, is true only if the experience in out to untap the inner feelings of the tached...
...ter of these, both original and borrowed...
...But if this is the case, and I so, is the extraordinary wealth of mat- book...
...rea- such an exquisite way that a world c f Contrary to much contemporary thought, son, affectivity...
...love and personhood...
...adequately the structure of moral judg- from a particular perspective-that...
...Its first sentence, "presents a theory of thing philosophers have been turning out foundation is "the experience of the moral knowledge...
...what befits certain persons-those, namely, who have had a certain (cultur- sources, Hamilton and Jackson not only Despite fragile health, he captained an survived but changed the course of the artillery company in the early campaigns ally conditioned) experience of persons...
...theory and method of moral discernment lack a decent general theory of cognition...
...a book of extraordinary quality and importance...
...obscene gos- weight, only intensity...
...caches of empty weight...
...before rushing to judgment...
...Must we impose our bur- before personal rebirth, for a virtuous life possi- In the story, the narrator, a gentle and dens on strangers...
...For if the foundation different periods of early American his- tions for achieving the aristocratic ideal of morality is the rational basis for moral tory, Hamilton was Jackson's senior by of his father were exceedingly limited...
...As he himself puts it, "It is this made failures of men like his father...
...The book is at once a succinct volume of Aron's life and thought and the only collection of his writings to be orculture ganized around a theme which Aron himself considers central to his life work: the dialectic of politics and history - how the past as perceived in the present forms a basis for political activity...
...of what Maguire calls "reality-revealing Maguire is anything but the innocent in But the author fails to develop and interquestions" and represents the crucial interdisciplinary discourse that relate their implications...
...While foundational experience-"No one" he subjects...
...questi( sympathy with his characters' fallen state gians have called the mystery of Original Are we truly this close to one need ti together with their vague yearnings for Sin than his excellent "Seaside Houes...
...The model he suggests for logical and social sciences, as well as a shallow...
...320 pages $15.95 University of Maryland 1 PR M Riverside, D Brown Street IC-136 19 January 1979: 23 judgments are a function of all the factors Lapses like these undermine the au- consciousness-raising, at which he is that have shaped our individual lives, thor's aim to provide an epistemology of very good...
...In all my career as a biog- out in 1781 (Hamilton had apparently need not be universal to be considered rapher," he reflects, "I had never come been long looking for a pretext) and the genuinely and normatively human...
...What he has provided here is how is what we take to be "knowing" ethics, as does also his failure to analyze a brilliant over-view of the moral sphere anything more than personal "opinion...
...Richard Harvey Brown, FREE A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc...
...It is rather one experience R. Emmett Curran madman who sought from the world an alongside others and one which a whole ever-denied release from inner class of humans, viz...
...Briefly, morality has to do Maguire hopes to correct that shortcom- ranging, remarkably erudite book that is with "all judgments of what befits or ing...
...No one without a is a cai legitimate concern ot any adult who has sip is later heard about the Greenwoods...
...Green- acolytes o. er not mystery but endless moods to me that man's inclination toward light, wood's presence begins to infect him, mystification...
...Born into poverty and very friend...
...XIII) on the not perceived, or where it is per- individual and social factors at work in "hazards of moral discourse" in which ceived as applying only to a few, ethical reflection, is that our ethical conattention is called to a whole range of distinctively human living is cut victions are necessarily relative and subrelativizing conditions (e.g...
...and a "moneygrubbing" world that perience...
...The work may well City State Zip become a classic of its kind...
...In the church, you know, that al- dreams that he realizes are Mr...
...Enclosed is my By MANFRED STANLEY Exploring the conceptual un- check/money order for $ derpinnings of modern civilization, Stanley reveals the (Add sales tax if applicable...
...They don't know what prevailing mood of negation and reducmoral knowledge is because, with all sees it, is not to vindicate the possibility tionism in the realm of value (Chap...
...IV-XII), he elaborates his Commonweal: 22 methodology...
...The spokes, A case in point and absolutely central on the other hand, pertain to the evalua- Moral debate takes place because to the book's theme, has to do with the tive phase and represent the plurality of persons are perceived as valuable in cognitive status of ethical judgments...
...presen Books: THE FOUNDATION OF ETHICS BERNARD Lonergan once remarked THE 140RAL CHOICE roughly into four groups...
...Suddenly, Mr...
...What he found made during the war nor afterwards, was parquestion is not implicit in all experience but is rather a particular, contingent him feel as though he "had stepped under ticularly close to Hamilton...
...Hidden relationships are @ $15.95 each revealed among historical, philosophical, and sociologi- POLITICS AND HISTORY (901000-4) @$15.95 each cal disciplines, policy science, and common sense...
...In fact, in the crucial third Ambition,and authority chapter, the stand taken on the foundation of morality would seem to make THE TOUIIC HAMILTON: abandoned him, Flexner's Hamilton cargenuine moral knowledge impossible...
...Washington, for his part, neither discreet Hamilton...
...Like life itself, humor has no tragic my concern, as it seems to me it is the whiskey bottles are found...
...The hub is made up theology are all liberally represented...
...This collection shows Aron's skill as THE TECHNOLOGICAL a judicious and erudite analyst...
...The experience [of the value of persons] that ANDREW JACKSON AND THE COURSE OF emigration to New York, according to sets us apart from beast and barbarian" AMERICAN EMPIRE, 1767-1821 Flexner, was the start of a lifelong quest (italics mine)., In other words, the Robert V. Remini for a new identity, but there were eventu"foundational experience" is not someHarper & Row, $15 [502 pp.] ally two Hamiltons: one visionary, logithing implicit in all descriptively human cal, controlled, the other a "semiexperience...
...The task of the ethicist, as he The chapters of The Moral Choice fall tail (Chaps...
...agains botanical-and I mean spiritual light...
...I) and because of the porary ethicists...
...The two fell affair)-he goes on to say: "Something Niagara...
...It seems to be that one's total experi- ends with this reflection of his in another than our random understanding of death so, is ence is the drive toward light...
...The kind of confusion at work here is young American nation...
...Greenwood has become his Cheever does this again and again...
...A BIOGRAPHY ried with him from the Leeward Islands For what he does is to identify that founJames Thomas Flexner an abiding contempt for human nature dation with a particular, contingent exLittle, Brown and Company, $15 [378 pp...
...A psy- former aide went back to leading troops...
...another...
...the lights of other haunted cottages methoc evident, is deeply Christian in sensibil- Cheever, like all great artists consciously where people are building up an his mei ity...
...Yet author shows how the comic and the compelling valuableness and sa- the one conclusion to which his own tragic are related to ethics...
...This is not, to be sure, for any his method is a wagon-wheel with central diversity of traditions in philosophy and dearth of profound ideas...
...myths, short...
...Of these, inneed to determine the facts of the case philosophers often have been in the past deed, he sometimes seems hardly aware...
...Few of his stories, apart from clev- committed to religious faith or other- accrual of happiness or misery that hub an erly inserted Biblical allusions, are obvi- wise, begins here...
...and family...
...their emphasis on logical and linguistic of such knowledge, but rather to lay bare Next comes the foundational part (Chap...
...This book," he writes in its very light years away from practically every- does not befit persons as persons...
...The rootlessness of Hamilton was his morality is to be understood as more than Shamed as an illegitimate child and strength as well as his weakness...
...do-well father by a mother who later eighteenth century meant local commuCommonweal: 24...
...insidious effects of technicism on contemporary social No...
...This is the fundamental question, ment...
Vol. 106 • January 1979 • No. 1
