Catastrophe Ethics
How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices
How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices
How to live a morally decent life in the midst of today's constant, complex choices In a world of often confusing and terrifying global problems, how should we make choices in our everyday lives? Does anything on the individual level really make a difference? In Catastrophe Ethics, Travis Rieder tackles the moral philosophy puzzles that bedevil us. He explores vital ethical concepts from history and today and offers new ways to think about the “right” thing to do when the challenges we face are larger and more complex than ever before. Alongside a lively tour of traditional moral reasoning from thinkers like Plato, Mill, and Kant, Rieder posits new questions and exercises about the unique conundrums we now face, issues that can seem to transcend old-fashioned philosophical ideals. Should you drink water from a plastic bottle or not? Drive an electric car? When you learn about the horrors of factory farming, should you stop eating meat or other animal products? Do small commitments matter, or are we being manipulated into acting certain ways by corporations and media? These kinds of puzzles, Rieder explains, are everywhere now. And the tools most of us unthinkingly rely on to “do the right thing” are no longer enough. Principles like “do no harm” and “respect others” don’t provide guidance in cases where our individual actions don’t, by themselves, have any effect on others at all. We need new principles, with new justifications, in order to navigate this new world. In the face of consequential and complex crises, Rieder shares exactly how we can live a morally decent life. It’s time to build our own catastrophe ethics.
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This one is a hard one for me to review. Why? It wasn't the book that I thought it was going to be.
Now, that's as much on me as anyone else. I read some snippets and press materials, and I was drawn in by an ethical examination climate change as a catastrophe, and for what it's worth, as an emergency manager, I was anticipating a sort of spin-off of ethical considerations for climate change-exacerbated disasters as well.
But again, that's not what this book was.
That said, I didn't NOT enjoy the book; in fact, when I reoriented my headspace, I quite liked several passages. Rieder makes the reader think, and that's a strength of the book. There were passages and phrases that stuck with me for days, and I even shared a few of those in photo form (properly cited, of course!) on other social feeds. I've studied ethics at a surface level while working towards degrees, and it was refreshing to see a contemporary spin put on popular ethics debates like abortion.
I read one review on Goodreads that lambasted the final chapter of Catastrophe Ethics as overly didactic and woke, and I understand how a review like that could hit the waves, so to speak. I didn't read the last chapter as preachy, though. It was Rieder's attempt to situate a newly-coined term - “catastrophe ethics” - into a complicated, interconnected world where his Puzzle is all around us. (You can't hide if you're a climate change denier.) Like all valid (in my opinion) ethical discussions, conversants should feel a tinge of discomfort.
For me, I once read from a textbook that one of the differences between ethics and morals is that ethics are collectively-focused, while morals are more personally-focused. That's understandably reductive, but it's something I've carried with me for a few years now. That said, perhaps there was room in this book to distinguish ethics and morals more explicitly. It's there, but there are also plenty of instances where there's a murkiness caused by overlapping uses of the two constructs. Would that change my view of the value of the book? No, but it was something for which I was looking when beginning the reading.
I still want to read the book that looks at the ethical challenges surrounding disaster (or “catastrophes” as mega disasters), and I'm bummed that it wasn't between these covers. Still, I'm glad to have read this one, and I enjoyed Rieder's writing style. I'll dive back into this one again, someday, when I really want to focus more broadly on ethical thinking.
