David Brooks, op-ed columnist for the New York Times, has just written “The Road to Character“, a book about the path to living as a moral person. Writing in the Times, he gives a few examples of the virtues he believes moral people possess, presenting a sort of ‘moral bucket list’.
Oliver Burkeman interviewed him in the Guardian for his book release, and the two spoke about the contradiction in his authorship on a book about humility and morality.
From the article:
David Brooks is aware there’s some irony in the subject matter of his latest book, which is a hymn to humility, and the importance of acknowledging how little we can ever truly know. As a twice-weekly opinion columnist for the New York Times, and a fixture on US television and radio, he is, in his own words, “paid to be a narcissistic blowhard, to volley my opinions, to appear more confident about them than I really am”; he is also one of the few conservatives whose views Barack Obama often solicits.
He covered some of the material in a talk he gave for the Aspen Institute last year, focusing on the attributes of people broadly identified as moral, and exploring how struggling and suffering change our lives in memorable ways.
Will you read Brook’s new book? What do you think of his views on morality and humility?
Posted by David Streever