Ruth W. Grant (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226306834
- eISBN:
- 9780226306858
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226306858.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
What does a good life look like? How do people become good? Are there multiple, competing possibilities for what counts as a good life, all equally worthy? Or, is there a unified and transcendent ...
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What does a good life look like? How do people become good? Are there multiple, competing possibilities for what counts as a good life, all equally worthy? Or, is there a unified and transcendent conception of the good that should guide our judgment of the possibilities? What does a good life look like when it is guided by God? How is a good life involved with the lives of others? And, finally, how good is good enough? These questions are the focus of this book, the product of a year-long conversation about goodness. Its eight chapters challenge the dichotomies that usually govern how goodness has been discussed in the past: altruism versus egoism; reason versus emotion; or moral choice versus moral character. Instead, the contributors seek to expand the terms of the discussion by coming at goodness from a variety of perspectives: psychological, philosophic, literary, religious, and political. In each case, they emphasize the lived realities and particulars of moral phenomena, taking up examples and illustrations from life, literature, and film—from Achilles and Billy Budd, to Oskar Schindler and Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, to Iris Murdoch and the citizens of Flagstaff, Arizona.Less
What does a good life look like? How do people become good? Are there multiple, competing possibilities for what counts as a good life, all equally worthy? Or, is there a unified and transcendent conception of the good that should guide our judgment of the possibilities? What does a good life look like when it is guided by God? How is a good life involved with the lives of others? And, finally, how good is good enough? These questions are the focus of this book, the product of a year-long conversation about goodness. Its eight chapters challenge the dichotomies that usually govern how goodness has been discussed in the past: altruism versus egoism; reason versus emotion; or moral choice versus moral character. Instead, the contributors seek to expand the terms of the discussion by coming at goodness from a variety of perspectives: psychological, philosophic, literary, religious, and political. In each case, they emphasize the lived realities and particulars of moral phenomena, taking up examples and illustrations from life, literature, and film—from Achilles and Billy Budd, to Oskar Schindler and Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, to Iris Murdoch and the citizens of Flagstaff, Arizona.
Tony Tost
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031564
- eISBN:
- 9781617031571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031564.003.0024
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
“A Boy Named Sue,” a song composed by Shel Silverstein and performed by Johnny Cash, is about a boy’s displeasure for growing up as a kind of comic legend because he has a woman’s name, for which he ...
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“A Boy Named Sue,” a song composed by Shel Silverstein and performed by Johnny Cash, is about a boy’s displeasure for growing up as a kind of comic legend because he has a woman’s name, for which he has faced a life of mockery and abuse. It is some sort of a fable: a boy raised by a name and not by a father. The strange resonance of “A Boy Named Sue” had to be among the precedents informing “Thirteen,” another Cash song about a man born without any name at all. Written by Glenn Danzig , it is a composition that toys with the fault line separating tragedy and farce. One of the song’s lines is “Bad luck wind blowing at my back.” This chapter examines the lyrics of “Thirteen” and how the song embraces Cash’s “Man in Black” persona, as well as how his rendering evokes the complexities involving his own mythology.Less
“A Boy Named Sue,” a song composed by Shel Silverstein and performed by Johnny Cash, is about a boy’s displeasure for growing up as a kind of comic legend because he has a woman’s name, for which he has faced a life of mockery and abuse. It is some sort of a fable: a boy raised by a name and not by a father. The strange resonance of “A Boy Named Sue” had to be among the precedents informing “Thirteen,” another Cash song about a man born without any name at all. Written by Glenn Danzig , it is a composition that toys with the fault line separating tragedy and farce. One of the song’s lines is “Bad luck wind blowing at my back.” This chapter examines the lyrics of “Thirteen” and how the song embraces Cash’s “Man in Black” persona, as well as how his rendering evokes the complexities involving his own mythology.
Ruth W. Grant
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226306834
- eISBN:
- 9780226306858
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226306858.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This chapter, which challenges the determination of altruism with moral goodness and the presumption that altruism and egoism are mutually exclusive, utilizes Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree in ...
More
This chapter, which challenges the determination of altruism with moral goodness and the presumption that altruism and egoism are mutually exclusive, utilizes Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree in order to argue that there are forms of altruism which are not good because they are destructive of psychic health and human flourishing. Moreover, it investigates the alternatives presented by Plato and Sigmund Freud. For Plato, there can be no conflict between goodness and psychic health because the two are one and the same. For Freud, the demands of morality are the source of painful psychic conflicts. A vision of goodness as psychic health provided good grounds for avoiding injustice. Freud's children's stories rarely have entirely happy endings. “Ethics of altruism” too often fail to recognize the claims of the self, and as a result make the mistake of measuring goodness by the self-sacrifice it requires.Less
This chapter, which challenges the determination of altruism with moral goodness and the presumption that altruism and egoism are mutually exclusive, utilizes Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree in order to argue that there are forms of altruism which are not good because they are destructive of psychic health and human flourishing. Moreover, it investigates the alternatives presented by Plato and Sigmund Freud. For Plato, there can be no conflict between goodness and psychic health because the two are one and the same. For Freud, the demands of morality are the source of painful psychic conflicts. A vision of goodness as psychic health provided good grounds for avoiding injustice. Freud's children's stories rarely have entirely happy endings. “Ethics of altruism” too often fail to recognize the claims of the self, and as a result make the mistake of measuring goodness by the self-sacrifice it requires.
