Ethics for Everyone: How to Increase Your Moral Intelligence.

by Arthur Dobrin, D.S.W. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002); 254 pp; $15.95 paper.

moe is nearly ninety. He is facing of the most difficult decisions in his long life. He must decide whether Anne, his wife of more than sixty years, should receive surgery to prevent a heart attack. The surgeon has assured Moe that the procedure has a high success rate even for elderly patients like Anne. And if she doesn't have the operation, she is likely to suffer a serious, possibly fatal heart attack within a year.

It should be an easy call. Do the operation. But Anne has Alzheimer's disease. Her mental condition is deteriorating rapidly, and before long she won't be able to care for herself. At his advanced age, Moe may not be able to take care of her either. Under these circumstances, should he ask Anne's doctors to take action to prolong her life or should he opt for doing nothing and let nature take its course?

This predicament is one of more than two dozen ethical dilemmas summarized and discussed in Ethics for Everyone: How to Increase Your Moral Intelligence by Arthur Dobrin. Dobrin is leader emeritus of the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island and Professor of Humanities at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. He has dealt extensively with dilemmas like this one in lectures, small group discussions, and one-on-one counseling. But he has more than a professional interest in Moe and Anne. They were his parents.

Moe vacillated. He shifted desperately from one side to the other. "If I can save her, I have to do it," he would say. "If I don't choose that, it's like I killed her." But then a few minutes later he would change his mind. "But she's going to become a person without a mind. She never wanted to live in a situation where she can't take care of herself." Dobrin listened to his father and agreed with him, even when he was contradicting an opinion he had expressed only a few moments earlier.

Dobrin was opposed to the operation. He didn't want his mother to live on more like a vegetable than a human being, and he didn't want his father to be burdened with caring for her in such a state. But in order to provide a sounding board and help his father make his own decision, he withheld his opinion. In the end, Moe decided to go ahead with the surgery. Anne underwent the low-risk procedure and died on the operating table.

I have serious reservations about an ethical dilemmas approach to teaching ethics. I don't believe our ethical development revolves around learning to make difficult choices and refining our ability to resolve ethical dilemmas. We become the human beings we are in the context of moment-to-moment relationships and events that have little of the decisiveness or intensity of a bona fide ethical dilemma. And the character and awareness we develop in these low-profile everyday moments shape our ability to respond morally and humanely at times when life really puts us to the test.

I admire the way Dobrin interacted with his father. He listened to his father and stood by him throughout the entire decision-making process. He supported his father even when he made a choice he didn't agree with. But I can imagine an equally loving son or daughter being far more assertive in expressing personal opposition to surgery out of concern for both parents. I can even imagine this person asking the doctors to discourage Moe from choosing to extend her life. I think that's what I might have done.

The point is, there is no absolutely right thing to do, no sure and certain outcome. Choosing the best course of action isn't as important as the spirit in which the choice is made--and the love, care, and support that are mobilized under difficult circumstances.

It's not hard to conceive of unconstructive courses of action. Confronted by their father's indecision, some children may throw up their hands and distance themselves from the issue, forcing their father to make his decision without the emotional support he needs so desperately. Other sons and daughters may attempt to take the decision out of their father's hands. Instead of listening to him, they may tell him what to think. They may speak to the doctors on his behalf in a manner that suggests he is incapable of thinking and speaking for himself.

Most of us have seen family members and professionals treat elderly people in similarly impatient and manipulative ways. Maybe we have even done it ourselves. The problem with these behaviors isn't an inability to make well-reasoned, ethical decisions. It is an unwillingness to journey with another human being through a decision-making process that involves pain, patience, and uncertainty.

I have other reservations about an emphasis on ethical dilemmas. Ethical dilemmas often reflect the overall moral stature of our lives. If our lives are circumscribed by a lack of moral vision and purpose, our ethical dilemmas may not rise above the level of the self-centered questions Dr. Laura's listeners ask her each day. On the other hand, when we are engaged in significant projects and causes, we are bound to confront dilemmas that would have confounded King Solomon.

Dobrin states that the goal of Ethics for Everyone is to help people raise their moral intelligence by learning to make ethical judgments. He acknowledges that this is a limited objective. Improving our capacity for ethical deliberation won't necessarily make us better people. "Other things besides good judgment are needed for that," he says. Our heart has to be in it. We must actually want to be better people. We must have the courage of our convictions.

In spite of these limitations, Dobrin's approach has some very real advantages. He has avoided the jargon and theory typically found in college texts. He has created an unusually readable "textbook of applied ethics." And he has steered clear of the technical ethical issues associated with modern business, medicine, journalism, law, and politics in order to wrestle with the problems ordinary people face in their everyday lives.

The ethical dilemmas are diverse. Should parents eavesdrop on their troubled fifteen-year-old son's telephone calls if they are worried that he may be suicidal? Is it ever appropriate to violate a confidence and reveal a secret if you think someone may benefit from the information? Is it moral to help someone in an advanced stage of Lou Gehrig's disease commit suicide? Should a hospital board accept a charitable contribution from a convicted mobster to build a new children's wing? What should you do with the cash when a malfunctioning pay phone spews out a pile of quarters?

For each of these open-ended stories, Dobrin provides a series of questions for readers to ask themselves, an analysis of the underlying moral problem, the opinion of an "expert" consultant, and his own thoughts and opinions. Frequently, Dobrin disagrees with the person he has consulted and the reader may disagree with both of them. The object isn't to achieve consensus, it is to help the reader lay a foundation for thinking more intelligently and constructively about ethical problems.

Just as Dobrin doesn't assume there is only one correct answer to the moral problems he presents, he also refuses to lock himself into any one school of ethical thought. He carefully weighs possible outcomes and he leans heavily on consequentialist thinking in developing his own answers. But he also relies on widely accepted ethical principles and a sense of duty, and he has a strong ethical concern for personal integrity. He expects his readers to be equally flexible and eclectic in the process of learning to form their own opinions and making their own ethical decisions.

Although Ethics for Everyone holds your attention and never bogs down, it isn't the kind of book you can absorb in a single sitting or read straight through from cover to cover. I kept putting the book down and mulling it over. I imagined what I would say, what I would do, and how others would react to my decision. Sometimes I read an ethical dilemma to my wife or whoever happened to be around and added yet another opinion to the mix.

Some of the episodes in the book will undoubtedly serve as illustrations in my own ethical culture talks and classes. I'll probably use several of them as the basis for small group discussions. I may have doubts about an ethical dilemmas approach to teaching ethics but, admittedly, the stuff is hard to resist. The stories are innately interesting. Thought provoking. Conveniently packaged. Wonderfully useful.

Fritz Williams is the leader of the Baltimore Ethical Society.