Word: moralisms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...conviction as out of a shrugging sense that if you have to go about the tiresome business of living, you might as well do it with honor. They try praying it out, sinning it out, killing, conspiring and spying it out. But that stain of pessimism and moral fatigue never comes out in the wash. (Not to mention the revolution...
...course it would do no good to stress Castle's fear of any moral challenge intruding on his well-guarded homelife, if such a challenge were not precisely what was in store. Castle, you see, is a double-agent who passes secrets to the Russians. I mention this crucial detail midway through this review because it's only at that point in the book that the reader discovers it. By that time, a number of outrages have occurred to rattle Castle's conscience and force him to put his sacred private life on the line. Suspecting a leak but collaring...
Taken together, these scarcely add up to a comprehensive program, let alone a draconian one. But most could be useful first steps. Economic advisers figure they would also give Carter moral authority to make a renewed plea to labor and business for wage-price restraint...
When is it permissible to tell a lie? Never, according to Augustine and Kant. Machiavelli approved lying for princes, Nietzsche for the exceptional hero-the Superman. Most other philosophers, and ordinary folk, are less certain, allowing some lies, but not others. After some 2,500 years of moral speculation, says Philosopher Sissela Bok, mankind is still trying to work out ground rules for acceptable lying...
Most norms on lying, Bok writes, grow out of elaborate moral systems of thought that "are often elegant in operation, noble in design. But when we have to make difficult concrete moral choices, they give us little help." In the absence of clear social guidelines, she says, casual lying has become entrenched in America. Indeed. Social Psychologist Jerald Jellison estimates that the average American outstrips Pinocchio by telling a whopping 200 lies a day, including white lies and false excuses ("Sorry I'm late. I was tied up at the office...