morality

Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Edited by Rebecca L. Walker, Philip J. Ivanhoe

Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems is a book outlining how virtues can be included in modern ethical analysis. There are multiple ways to apply virtue ethics, or, as the authors like to say, to put virtue ethics "to work." Illustrating the variations are thirteen different authors giving detailed accounts of virtue ethics at work inside schools, hospitals, courtrooms and boardrooms. The chapters test the theory as it relates to war, race, affluence, and the environment. Also important to note is the delineation they make between ethics for personal use and ethics for professionals working in specific fields.

Readers can digest the book in parts or as a whole. The former is ideal for a person interested in methodological instruction, say a doctor looking to include ethical reasoning in their daily encounters with patients. In fact there are several chapters that would prove enlightening if not instructional in the daily routines of heath caregivers. On the other hand, a person will benefit from the book as a whole if they are interested in the revival of virtue ethics as a growing body of theory. For someone with this kind of academic pursuit, Working Virtue offers a thorough and diverse overview of contemporary issues and their need to be understood from an ethical perspective. Nevertheless, this book is of relevant interest to anyone seeking a broader perspective on the universal plight of moral wrangling.

As a philosophical subset, morality is predominantly rooted in three theories. Virtue ethics is one, along with deontology (emphasis on duty and rules) and consequentialism (emphasis on utilitarianism). Generally speaking, the focus of virtue theory is on the human character: if you live with a consistent disposition to behave appropriately, and if your actions reflect this disposition, then you are generally living a good and moral life. The variety of this book's interdisciplinary approach does much to illustrate the difficulty in compartmentalizing these theories from one another, especially when trying to isolate their worldly applications.

Its utility is evident after the thirty-page introduction, in which the editors offer thoughtful analysis of each of the chapters within. They also spend time to qualify and explain the theory's major conflicts and historical predication. While it is unlikely that every topic will resonate to every reader, it is of great importance to see how each falls technically within virtue ethics. From the many authors that make up Working Virtue comes a wealth of knowledge that can help a generation of professional people who seek to be informed by ethical theory and guided by ethical principle.

Written by: Katy Pine, January 1st 2010

Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight over Sexual Rights

admin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:12:00 +0000

Edited by Gilbert Herdt

New York University Press

The war on drugs. The down low. Rainbow parties. Obamacare death panels. Our society has a crazy way of taking contemporary moral issues and, with a dash of religious fervor and moral superiority and a pinch of media dramatization, blowing them up into large-scale panics.

It’s not surprising that many moral panics are aimed at sexualities or sexual practices deemed “abnormal.” Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight over Sexual Rights asserts that this focus on sexuality isn’t a coincidence: many moral panics are rooted in the fear that “different” sexual practices will alter the foundation of society in ways that are catastrophically devastating. Society, ever vigilant, attempts to eliminate these threats with a shrill moral anger designed to shame those outside the norm and intimidate everyone else into staying inside the bubble of conformity.

Herdt’s book suggests that this shame is not only misplaced, but also counterproductive. Often, moral panics allow communities to ignore aspects of society that are lacking or failing, and point the finger of blame at those who bear the brunt of those inadequacies. For example, Cathy Cohen’s “Black Sexuality, Indigenous Moral Panics, and Respectability: From Bill Cosby to the Down Low” suggests that the decline of the black family postulated by Cosby and others is less a product of declining moral values in black society, and more a product of societal forces that have caused economic and social justice to stagnate.

I wish I could say Moral Panics, Sex Panics captured my attention from cover to cover. Unfortunately, the book’s tendency to belabor its points meant that, only pages into a chapter, I was tempted to skip ahead a few pages or take a snooze. The chapter on gay marriage, for instance, is too heavy-handed on historical details. Analysis and discussion about those details, however, is slim, creating a book that is dry and laborious to read. Which is a shame, because Herdt’s anthology discusses a diverse array of sex panics surrounding the AIDS epidemic, black sexuality, gay marriage, reproductive rights, and colonialism—a cornucopia of issues certainly worthy of intelligent debate.

Written by: Gwen Emmons, October 11th 2009

Thirst

admin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:08:00 +0000

Directed by Park Chan-Wook

Focus Features

Some say the mark of a great film is that it defies our expectations. If that's the case, then Oldboy director Park Chan-wook's latest should be considered one of the best. Thirst is the story of a Catholic priest who becomes a vampire, and has thus earned the label of a horror flick, but the film itself is virtually genre-proof. Sure, the experience of watching it was somewhat similar to that of any slasher, in that I had to cringe and turn my head away from the gore from time to time (an embarrassing admission for a film reviewer). But the sheer variety and complexity of the thoughts and emotions Thirst conjured makes it much more than just "horror" and, frankly, much more than just another film.

Appropriately, Thirst is a feast for the senses, Park's sound and visuals quickly tumbling toward the operatic as priest Sang-Hyun (The Host's Song Kang-ho) surrenders more and more to his vampiric desires. Sang-Hyun's addictive relationship with the young Tae-Joo (Kim Ok-vin) nearly puts him—and us—on sensory overload. Park acknowledges—or rather, foreshadows—that this isn't necessarily a good thing, making their sex scenes alternately titillating and disgusting.

What's most startling, though, is how such carnality is often meshed with a hyperbolic, almost slapstick sense of humor. When Sang-Hyun "feeds," we find him lying on the floor of a hospital room, taking pulls from a patient's IV like he's sipping a milkshake through a straw. And when he and Tae-Joo sleep together for the first time, she literally has to pry his stubborn virginal legs apart to make it happen.

Park has dubbed his own film a "vampire melodrama," and there is definitely a strong classical Hollywood influence at play here. Tae-Joo is a modern update on the femme fatale of the '40s, right down to the way she convinces Sang-Hyun to murder her husband, clutching his shoulder a la Norma Desmond. And as in the best traditional noir films, it is she who steals the show and whose story we ultimately remember most. This is due in no small part to Kim, who is both classic and creative in her journey from a ghost of a young girl to a delightfully manipulative monster of a woman. To think that this young actor's career has only just begun is truly exciting.

Certain viewers may find it jarring to watch Thirst seamlessly shift from horror to dark comedy to suspense thriller to romance, but its themes of morality, guilt, and redemption are consistent and utterly powerful. For this reason alone, it is worth seeing, preferably on the big screen for the sake of Park's meticulous compositions, and if you're anything like me, you'll crave a second viewing as soon as the end credits roll.

Written by: Caitlin Graham, August 18th 2009