Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2024
336 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
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.
"An informed, careful investigation of the connection between individual choices and large, complex problems...With an open mind and a firm grasp of the issues, Rieder brings the question of living a decent life into the modern era." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] thought-provoking treatise [on] how to live a 'morally decent life' amid an accelerating climate crisis...Rieder wisely avoids settling on any one philosophical system, and instead models the value of 'switch[ing] our moral cameras over into manual mode' to pick and choose elements from each. It's an excellent resource for the environmentally conscious weighing their life's choices." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Smart, splendid, and brave. A crash course in ethics from an expert philosopher. This book gave me hope for the future and taught me that living a moral life is having the courage to parse the nuanced in-between. A must read for anyone who cares about doing good in the world." —Anna Lembke, New York Times bestselling author of Dopamine Nation
"A fascinating and thought-provoking guide to navigating the ethics of the climate crisis." —Siddarth Shrikanth, author of The Case for Nature
"Urgent, accessible, and a pleasure to read. The topic could hardly be more serious, but Rieder serves up his philosophy as a readable mix of erudition, self-reflection, anecdote and wit." —Dr. Elizabeth Cripps, author of What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care and Parenting on Earth
This information about Catastrophe Ethics was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Travis Rieder, PhD, is a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where he directs the Master of Bioethics degree program. He holds secondary appointments in the departments of Philosophy and Health Policy and Management, as well as the Center for Public Health Advocacy. His first book, a memoir of opioid dependence and withdrawal, was named an NPR Best Book of 2019, and his TED Talk on the same topic has been viewed more than 2.5 million times. He has been interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air and his opinion writing has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, and Psychology Today.
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