Arthur Dobrin

This book presents a series of ethical dilemmas, asks questions about each and then gives a discussion of the relevant topic at hand. For instance, a convicted mobster donates over $1 Million to a hospital under the condition that the new wing be named after him/her. So of course the major question is whether or not it is ethical to accept tainted money. Some of these are experiences that the author had, so I suppose it would hit towards home for people like him. There are simpler things too, like favoring one child over another for punishment, favoring one child over another for attention, giving someone a job just because they are a minority, stuff like that. A lot of the quandaries are rather depressing, like is assisted suicide always wrong? This one arises in a case where a woman had ALS and could no longer move her body. She wanted to die, since that was the last freedom afforded her, but her husband refused. So she died some two weeks later in terrible mental anguish.

Each discussion gives a bit of interesting exposition on the problem at hand as well. In each one the author asks an expert their opinion, and they give that opinion. Some of them are divided on what they should do. Going back to the Mobster Hospital example, they didn't think it was ethical to take the money, since the mobster wanted it named after them. If the mobster did have a change of heart about all the stuff they did, they would donate anonymously. This is how the reasoning goes, but you are left on your own to decide.

So it was quite interesting to read about these examples of ethics and whatnot, and I did take some new perspective with me from that. The book does have a definition of morality and ethics and what it is, but that is at the beginning, and the author states that it isn't meant to be a hold your hand sort of book. Then again, you will probably have the same opinions going out as you did going in, but I wouldn't know. I just wanted a book on ethics, and that is what I got.… (more)