Review by Choice Review
Tierney (California Lutheran Univ.) sets out to redress the separation in modern moral philosophy between ethical theory and practice. He identifies two problems, an overreliance on the concept of universal principles and an underattention to moral psychology and psychoanalytic studies of the self. The book reads like an undergraduate course covering standard figures, such as Hume and Smith, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein, with special attention also given to Freud and a contemporary psychoanalytic theorist, Heinz Kohut. Very little of the current work in moral philosophy is even cited. Where Tierney does cite current works relating directly to his argument--e.g., most notably Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self (CH, Feb'90) and Owen Flanagan's Varieties of Moral Personality (CH, Nov'91)--he does not discuss them. Though he announces interdisciplinary intentions, he neither discusses nor even mentions the great variety of work done over the past three decades by moral psychologists toward "a unified philosophical and psychological understanding." Carol Gilligan's work is mentioned in passing. Lawrence Kohlberg's is not even mentioned. However, Tierney's argument is at points insightful, and the book lessens the present dearth of discussion of psychoanalytic theory in moral philosophy. Undergraduate (all levels). D. R. C. Reed; Wittenberg University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
