Book Description

In 1959 at a fashionable New England college I introduced a course with what I believed to be an engaging title: "Problems in Christian Ethics." It quickly became very popular, probably because the students thought it might provide a last-gasp answer to the enormous problems raised by the changing world of the '50's and '60's. For both professor and students, the course provided a wonderful opportunity to work out one's point of view on ethical issues. But the major pedagogical stumbling block came in attempting to assign appropriate readings for the juicy subject matter. I either assigned the students a dozen different books to cover the course material, or I prohibited them from reading anything, insisting that the course's substantive content would come from the lectures. Now, after all these years, the problem has been solved. Living Issues in Ethics, a new book by Richard T. Nolan and Frank G. Kirkpatrick, fulfills admirably the need for a one-volume text discussing the basic problems in ethics and dealing with them in both a theoretical and a practical way. It is a solid book, totally contemporary and aware of the latest developments in Christian ethical thinking. In a lucid and engaging way, the authors present the following topics: "The Search for a Moral Philosophy," "Personal Identity and Fulfillment," "Health and Sexuality" and "Social Ethics." They engage the reader in subject matter ranging from "The Ingredients of a Moral Philosophy" to an insightful rendering of the history of that philosophy, as well as problems of femininity, varieties of love, marriage and the family, medical ethics, moral sexual conduct, obligations of the political order, the socialist alternative, the demand for expression versus the right to privacy, the dilemmas of dissent, sexual justice, energy and ecology, "life-boat" ethics, "just-war" theory, and many, many others. Each chapter contains a review and a section on suggested readings. The book is so good that I plan to use it in next year's "Problems in Christian Ethics." William A. Johnson Professor at Brandeis University, Mass.