The Moral Life Pdf

[Hilary Laite]

RandomHouse Trade, 2020.

Paperback. New. Item #300862

ISBN: 9780812983425

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life in a self-centered world.

"Deeply moving, frequently eloquent and extraordinarily incisive."--The Washington Post

Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy--who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn't my mountain after all. There's another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain.

And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment.

In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.

In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it's also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme--and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.

Christian morality is synonymous with life in Christ. We are to love God with our whole being and to love others as Jesus loves us, because God created all of us in his image and wants us to love one another as he loves us. The Christian moral life is defined by being in loving relationships and by living our lives in response to the teachings of Jesus.

The collection of readings in Christian Moral Life: A Primary Source Reader aims to help students learn the moral concepts and teachings that will guide them to live their lives as disciples of Christ.

But we should always remember that Christ's dying and rising offers us new life in the Spirit, whose saving grace delivers us from sin and heals sin's damage within us. Thus we speak of the value, dignity, and goal of human life, even with its imperfections and struggles. Human life, as a profound unity of physical and spiritual dimensions, is sacred. It is distinct from all other forms of life, since it alone is imprinted with the very image of its Creator.

The second element of life in Christ is the responsible practice of freedom. Without freedom, we cannot speak meaningfully about morality or moral responsibility. Human freedom is more than a capacity to choose between this and that. It is the God-given power to become who he created us to be and so to share eternal union with him. This happens when we consistently choose ways that are in harmony with God's plan. Christian morality and God's law are not arbitrary, but specifically given to us for our happiness. God gave us intelligence and the capacity to act freely. Ultimately, human freedom lies in our free decision to say "yes" to God. In contrast, many people today understand human freedom merely as the ability to make a choice, with no objective norm or good as the goal.

Another important foundation of Christian morality is the understanding of moral acts. Every moral act consists of three elements: the objective act (what we do), the subjective goal or intention (why we do the act), and the concrete situation or circumstances in which we perform the act (where, when, how, with whom, the consequences, etc.).

For an individual act to be morally good, the object, or what we are doing, must be objectively good. Some acts, apart from the intention or reason for doing them, are always wrong because they go against a fundamental or basic human good that ought never to be compromised. Direct killing of the innocent, torture, and rape are examples of acts that are always wrong. Such acts are referred to as intrinsically evil acts, meaning that they are wrong in themselves, apart from the reason they are done or the circumstances surrounding them.

We cannot speak about life in Christ or the moral life without acknowledging the reality of sin, our own sinfulness, and our need for God's mercy. When the existence of sin is denied it can result in spiritual and psychological damage because it is ultimately a denial of the truth about ourselves. Admitting the reality of sin helps us to be truthful and opens us to the healing that comes from Christ's redemptive act.

The Theological Virtues of faith, hope, and charity (love) are those virtues that relate directly to God. These are not acquired through human effort but, beginning with Baptism, they are infused within us as gifts from God. They dispose us to live in relationship with the Holy Trinity. Faith, hope, and charity influence human virtues by increasing their stability and strength for our lives.

The moral life requires grace. The Catechism speaks of this in terms of life in Christ and the inner presence of the Holy Spirit, actively enlightening our moral compass and supplying the spiritual strength to do the right thing. The grace that comes to us from Christ in the Spirit is as essential as love and rules and, in fact, makes love and keeping the rules possible.

1.Literature helps us better understand the human condition: I recently read A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara, a Man Booker nominee for 2016. The book explores (among other things) the complicated relationship between pedophiles and their victims, as well as the difficulty of discovering you have dignity after a life of abuse. I understand fallenness and shame so much better for after reading this novel. But I also understand the paradoxical nature of the human condition better. The book explores how a person can be strong and confident in one setting, and yet tolerant, even desirous of abuse in another, both in an attempt to deal with shame. These are things that I could unpack over lots of time, though, and research in a non-fiction form, but in literature form, it is almost as if this knowledge is acquired connaturally.

2.Literature is beautiful. Certainly not all fiction is beautiful, but good literature is. And a soul exposed to beauty only craves more beauty. Literature makes the soul more discerning in choosing beauty over lesser goods. A good book with really compelling characters, complex themes, a great sense of place, and gorgeous prose makes you crave more of where that came from. You are less likely to waste an hour mindlessly flipping through Pinterest or Facebook if you have a really good book waiting.

5.We are made for stories. We are storied beings. From the first cave paintings to the ancient myths to the medieval romance to today, human beings have told stories to help us understand who we are and what we are meant for, to guide us to a fuller sense of our humanity, to carve out our identity. One of my very favorite introductory texts to moral theology uses a work of fiction in each chapter to illuminate the point, to teach us to see the point in question (human longing, sin, redemption, virtue). These stories, while fiction, point to deeper truths than can be encapsulated by any non-fiction genre. And so, in a sense, even though I think people should intentionally seek out great fiction as part of a comprehensive moral existence, I really think there is no way around the stories that make us who we are. But with a mind attuned to read and comprehend great literature, we will in fact be more discerning about the stories that we make our own.

Cora Diamond has played a leading role in the reception and elaboration of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Diamond's contribution to Wittgenstein scholarship is distinguished by her striking and widely discussed suggestions about continuity between Wittgenstein's early and later writings. Her work in ethics, in important respects shaped by her study of Wittgenstein, has been similarly influential. The essays in this volume, by a number of distinguished philosophers, including Stanley Cavell, James Conant, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, and Martha Nussbaum, explore groundbreaking interpretations of Wittgenstein's philosophy and attempt to demonstrate its significance for ethics, using Diamond's writings on these topics as a springboard and inspiration.

The book begins with essays that address Diamond's work on Wittgenstein, defending and further developing her work both on the Tractatus and on Wittgenstein's later thought. Additional essays take up Diamond's writings on moral philosophy, examining her concept of "the difficulty of reality," her view that literature as such presents us with rational moral instruction, and her work on animals and ethics.

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