Product Description

Loving Life demonstrates that morality is a matter not of divine revelation or social convention or personal opinion -- but, rather, of the factual requirements of human life and happiness. Biddle shows how a true morality is derived logically from observable facts, what in essence such a morality demands, and why it is a matter of pure self-interest.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #167778 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780971373709
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"...Biddle demolishes the conventional wisdom that holds sacrifice as a moral ideal and offers...a compelling alternative." -- Center for the Advancement of Capitalism

"...challenging, informative, thoughtful.... Loving Life is very highly recommended reading...." -- Midwest Book Review

"...clear, simple, and...succinct.... [Biddle] performs effectively the difficult task of taking abstract moral principles and concretizing them...." -- The Intellectual Activist

"From start to finish, Loving Life engages the reader with its lively conversational style." -- The Ayn Rand Bookstore

From the Publisher
_Loving Life_ begins by exposing the baseless nature of the various moralities that call for human sacrifice and lead to human suffering; it then shows how a true morality is derived logically from observable facts and what such a morality implies--personally, socially, and politically. With clarity and elegance, Biddle demonstrates the principles, values, and virtues that are essential to human life and happiness; and he defines and defends the social and political conditions that are required for people to live together as civilized beings. His lucid discussion ranges from the fundamental cause of the massacre at Columbine High School to why Islamic terrorists are committed altruists; from what is wrong with subjectivism to why religion is a form of subjectivism; from the objective foundation of morality to the universal requirements of personal happiness; from the essence of moral virtue to why laissez-faire capitalism is the only moral social system. This book is as timely as it is profound.

From the Inside Flap
If you want to live your life to the fullest, if you want to achieve the greatest happiness possible, this book is for you. It is about the essential means to that end: a proper code of values--a proper morality.

Contrary to popular myth, morality does not come from God; it is not a matter of divine revelation. Nor is it a matter of social convention or personal opinion. Being moral does not consist in obeying commandments, or in doing whatever is culturally accepted, or in doing whatever one wants to do. The rabbis, the priests, the relativists, and the subjectivists are wrong. Morality is not a matter of faith or conformity or feelings.

True morality is a matter of the factual requirements of human life and happiness. It is a matter of reason, logic, and the law of cause and effect. As such, it is an indispensable guide to living well and loving life. This is demonstrated in the pages ahead.

Customer Reviews

A Guide to Happiness
This book demonstrates why the ethics of religion and subjectivism (whether social or personal) lead to psychological torture--then offers an alternative morality, explaining what supports it and the virtues that it requires.

Rejecting from the start the popular myth that morality comes from God, Biddle declares that "it is not a matter of divine revelation." Nor, he continues, "is it a matter of social convention or personal opinion. Being moral does not consist in obeying commandments, or in doing whatever is culturally expected, or in doing whatever one wants to do."

True morality, he believes, is not "a matter of faith or conformity or feelings" but "of the factual requirements of human life and happiness." Because of this, the subject of morality--for Biddle as for Rand (the philosopher whose ethics he presents in this book)--is "an indispensable guide to living well and loving life."

Thus, if you love your life and want to live it to the fullest--"if," the author says, "you want to achieve the greatest happiness possible"--then this book is definitely for you. With eloquence and above all clarity, Biddle demonstrates the essential means to that end--a proper, meaning objective, morality.

A profound yet easily accessible text on self-interest
The material abundance and individual freedom that is the hallmark of capitalism rests on upon the ethics of self-interest, but today perhaps no code of morality is more misunderstood and maligned. In a profound yet easily accessible text, Craig Biddle demolishes the conventional wisdom that holds sacrifice as a moral ideal and offers the honest reader a compelling alternative.

Through examples drawn from today's headlines, historical analysis and the thoughtful examination of leading intellectual thinkers, Loving Life clearly demonstrates that morality is a matter not of divine revelation or social convention or personal opinion-but, rather, of the factual requirements of human life and happiness. Biddle shows how a true morality is derived logically from observable facts, what in essence such a morality demands, and why it is a matter of pure self-interest.

Loving Life exposes the baseless nature of the various moralities that call for human sacrifice and lead to human suffering and shows how a true morality is derived logically from observable facts and what such a morality implies-personally, socially, and politically. With clarity and elegance, Biddle demonstrates the principles, values, and virtues that are essential to human life and happiness; and he defines and defends the social and political conditions that are required for people to live together as civilized beings.

This book is the perfect book to give to a friend or relative who needs an intellectual jumpstart in their lives.

For students of ethics and morality
Loving Life: The Morality Of Self-Interest And The Facts That Support It by Craig Biddle is a challenging, informative, thoughtful treatise about the true meaning of ethics. Putting forth that morality does not come from God, social convention, personal opinion, or limiting oneself to what is culturally accepted, but rather embodied in reason, logic, cause and effect, and understanding the importance and value of human life and happiness. Loving Life is a fresh voice of reason about truly living well and pursuing happiness within ethical bounds that are righteous for the best reason of all - because they are rationally constructed out of respect and love for all other human beings. Loving Life is very highly recommended reading for both students of ethics and morality, as well as the non-specialist general readers with an interest in philosophy.