Ethics and integrity are supposed to be the bedrock of a civilization. But lately, they feel like something that’s fallen out of fashion. Does agonizing over a moral decision mark you as a chump?
I’ve always admired people who take these questions seriously. One is the Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski, especially in his ten-part television series Dekalog, where characters grapple with living out the Ten Commandments in a Communist-era apartment building in Poland.
I’ve also been a longtime reader of “The Ethicist,” the advice column in The New York Times that takes everyday moral questions seriously. Improbably, I came to it through the work of the poet Katha Pollitt. Her ex-husband, Randy Cohen, was at the helm. “Libraries are marvelous institutions,” I remember him writing, and I still think of them in exactly those terms.
The column is currently written by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. What continues to interest me is its focus on ordinary situations most of us recognize: family expectations, social pressure, and the difficulty of knowing what the “right” thing to do is. Moral dilemmas are rarely abstract.
Lately, the Times has been inviting readers to respond directly to the ethical questions under discussion. I submitted a short response, and it was published alongside the column.
It’s no small comfort to know there are still places—and readers—willing to linger over questions without easy answers, and to offer help.
