Prateleira 8 Livro 63

Meh. Extreme utilitarianism starts to sound like a calculus equation after a while. I'm not convinced. There's some good stuff here, I guess I would have liked it more 30 years ago. I thought I liked Singer's writing in other books I've read years ago, but it seemed tiresome now. Disappointing. ( )

If we are looking for a purpose broader than our own interests, something that will allow us to see our lives as possessing significance beyond the narrow confines of our own conscious states, one obvious solution is to take up the ethical point of view. The ethical point of view does [...] require us to go beyond a personal point of view to the standpoint of the impartial spectator. Thus looking at things ethically is a way of transcending our inward-looking concerns and identifying ourselves with the most objective point of view possible — with, as Sidgwick put it, 'the point of view of the universe'.

Singer's arguments are powerful and clear. In the field of applied ethics, there are few works as compelling as Practical Ethics—regardless of whether one is a consequentialist or not. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in challenging their ethical notions and digging deep into the most difficult moral issues of our time. ( )

A careful and systematic layman's treatment of of the study of ethics primarily centered on actual cases - hence the "practical" in the title. Singer's approach is essentially to introduce the reader to the fundamental questions of philosophical ethics by considering "obvious" answers to basic questions, and seeing how those obvious answers fare when confronted with difficult situations pulled from real life.
This is perhaps a slightly unfair approach - the legal maxim holding that "hard cases make bad law" comes to mind - but it does force the reader to confront some non-obvious difficulties in those obvious answers.
If I have a complaint with the book, it's that Singer often seems to take his conclusions as definitive, or to present them as definitive, when it seems clear that the reader still has some work to do in validating his steps, and even some room to disagree with the author.
However, the treatment of the subject is a good one, and the reader will find much to argue with here, and will likely have their mind changed a time or two. All in all, a good introduction to the subject, and the references and notes will lead the interested reader much deeper in if they choose to go there. ( )

Ethics as applied to difficult and controversial social questions from a secular, preference utilitarian perspective that "promotes actions that fulfill the interests (preferences) of those beings involved. The beings may be rational, that is to say, their interests may be carefully selected based on future projections, but this is not compulsory; here, the definition of party extends to all sentient beings" (Wikipedia). ( )