Book smart
Russ Shafer-Landau, professor of philosophy, “Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?,” Oxford University Press, 2004.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in his address to the United Nations following Sept. 11, 2001, proclaimed that “this was no time for moral relativism.” There could not be two legitimate, opposing points of view about the morality of the killings the 19 hijackers perpetrated. Their actions were evil, pure and simple. Of course, some (including the hijackers and their supporters) rejected this view. But if Giuliani was right, they were wrong, and their sincerity was no proof against such a judgment. What they did was unqualifiedly evil. Not just evil according to him, or to his (our) society — but evil, period.
Prior to Sept. 11, many academics derided this position, which had long been out of fashion outside the academy. “In my experience, most students new to the study of ethics also think such skepticism entirely appropriate,” Shafer-Landau says. “I want to assist in the resuscitation of the old-fashioned view, and do so in a way that is aimed very directly at the worries that prevent its acceptance.”
Most of these worries are philosophical. The central questions here include:
- How can we know what is right and wrong?
- Why should I be moral?
- Where do moral standards come from, if we don’t make them all up?
- What role, if any, does God play?
- What sort of thing is a moral value; how could it exist in a scientific world?
- How can we justify a policy of tolerance if morality is not just in the eye of the beholder?
Shafer-Landau’s surmise is that most who return skeptical answers do so not because of any excellent arguments in hand. Instead, they take skepticism as the default position because they cannot see how morality could be anything other than a human construct. This book identifies and analyzes arguments that support such skepticism, as well as defensive arguments designed to display the attractions of an objective view of ethics.
Kimberly Zeuli, assistant professor, agricultural and applied economics; and senior faculty associate, Center for Cooperatives. “The Evolution of the Cooperative Model,” chapter in “Cooperatives and Local Development: Theory and Applications for the 21st Century,” edited by Christopher D. Merrett and Norman Walzer, M.E. Sharpe, 2003.
Zeuli’s chapter describes how the cooperative model and cooperative behavior have evolved due to economic and social change. Providing a “property rights” perspective, Zeuli provides a lively debate as to why owners of capital embrace the cooperative model in the first place. She then investigates pressures that have prompted changes to the cooperative enterprise.
Her work is part of a volume that examines cooperative business forms, which are becoming a major tool in local economic development and are being used in innovative ways to serve rural constituents.
Zeuli’s research interests include agricultural and marketing supply cooperatives, new generation co-ops, alternative business structures, co-op financing and equity, membership issues and rural development.
To submit a tome for consideration, e-mail wisweek@news.wisc.edu.