How Good People Make Tough Choices - by Rushworth M Kidder (Paperback)

About the Book

Every day, people face tough choices in which their basic moral principles seem to be in conflict. Now, the Director of the Institute for Global Ethics offers a clear strategy for solving ethical dilemmas. Rushworth Kidder explains ends-based, rule-based, and care-based decision making--and uses real-life examples to show how these principles can applied to thorny problems.

Book Synopsis

This insightful and brilliant analysis of ethics teaches readers valuable skills in evaluating tough choices and arriving at sound conclusions.

"A thought-provoking guide to enlightened and progressive personal behavior."
--Jimmy Carter

An essential guide to ethical action updated for our challenging times, How Good People Make Tough Choices by Rushworth M. Kidder offers practical tools for dealing with the difficult moral dilemmas we face in our everyday lives. The founder and president of the Institute for Global Ethics, Dr. Kidder provides guidelines for making the important decisions in situations that may not be that clear cut--from most private and personal to the most public and global. Former U.S. senator and NBA legend Bill Bradley calls How Good People Make Tough Choices "a valuable guide to more informed and self-conscious moral judgments."

From the Back Cover

Should you take a much-needed vacation or save money for the kids' education? Protect the endangered owl or maintain jobs for loggers? Have a heart-to-heart with a lying employee or fire him on the spot?

All of us face ethical choices. Sometimes they're easy: One side is wrong and the other is right. But how do we handle the really tough "right vs. right" dilemmas, where each side has strong moral arguments and we can't do both? This book helps us build Ethical Fitness^(R)--a values-based decision-making process so definitive that it's now a registered trade mark.

Rushworth M. Kidder, founder of the Institute for Global Ethics, teaches us how to think for ourselves in order to resolve ethical dilemmas ranging from the intimately personal to the broadly philosophical. Unique in its approach and rich with illustrative anecdotes--updated with examples of real-world conflicts from today's political realm and from Dr. Kidder's own observations--How Good People Make Tough Choices is an indispensable resource for spotting, understanding, and resolving our toughest decisions.

Review Quotes

"A thought-provoking guide to enlightened and progressive personal behavior." - Jimmy Carter

"Rushworth Kidder is the best sort of public philosopher, one who can bring home the force of an abstract principle by means of a telling real-life example. The result is a valuable guide to more informed and self-conscious moral judgments." - Bill Bradley

"A brilliant analysis that squarely faces all the issues and can be grasped by the thoughtful nonspecialist." - Kirkus Reviews