Why it is Good to be Good? Ask John Riker

John Riker, CC professor of philosophy, has published a new book that looks at ethics and moral issues.

Yet talk about irony: He says there were many obstacles in the writing of “Why it is Good to be Good,” including the fact that his computer and all the backups were stolen just as he completed the first draft.

In the book, Riker shows how modernity’s reigning concept of the self undermines moral life and lays the basis for the epidemic of cheating that is devastating social and economic institutions. The aim of the book is to provide a compelling answer to the question of why persons living in modern society should want to adopt an ethical way of being in the world.

Riker says “Why it is Good to be Good” is written for an intelligent lay audience and should be of interest in a world “in which a few too many people think that it is in their best interest to cheat if they don’t get caught.”

The book has just been released by Jason Aronson, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

“This is the book I have been wanting to write for my entire 40 years at CC,” he says. “Sometimes it takes a long time and many adventures of ideas to finally be able to think and say what you most want to.” The book began seven years ago when he was the Kohut Professor at the University of Chicago. During that year he presented his ideas both at the university and at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. “The response was so positive and strong that I set out to write the book.”

Riker also is the author of “Ethics and the Discovery of the Unconscious,” “Human Excellence and an Ecological Conception of the Psyche,” and “The Art of Ethical Thinking.”