A review of the philosophy book “How To Be Good” by John Harris (2016)
I don’t read books about philosophy very often because I find them too abstract and removed from the real world, but this book was given me by the author (Emeritus Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester), it is commendably short (less than 200 pages), and the title intrigued me. It is a thoughtful and thought-provoking work. However, it is a rather academic text (the publisher is the Oxford University Press) written in long, if carefully constructed, sentences with some specialist terminology.There are many references to past works and previous differences with other academics, notably Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, and yet Harris eventually concedes “I do not think P&S and I are, all things considered, so far apart” and acknowledges “It may well in the end come down to a clash of values” (which, I find, is often the case in arguments).
Harris is noted, in the world of philosophers, as being a libertarian-consequentialist. He favours the maximum freedom of choice and believes that a decision can only been regarded as moral is there is choice. What is the best choice? It is the one that, inter alia, best promotes justice, the rights and interests of persons, animals, and the planet and which best protects sentient individuals from suffering and harm”.
And how should one make choices? He insists that ‘ethical judgements involve, almost always, a combination of evidence and argument”. He believes – as I do – that “science is our chief hope for the future of humankind”.
I have myself written a layperson’s guide on “How To Be Good” [click here].