Perfection

Michael J. Hyde is University Distinguished Professor of Communication Ethics in the Department of Communication and is on the faculty of the Program for Bioethics, Health and Society in the School of Medicine, Wake Forest University. He is the author of The Life-Giving Gift of Acknowledgment and the award-winning The Call of Conscience. In addition, he is the editor of The Ethos of Rhetoric and Communication Philosophy and the Technological Age; with Walter Jost he co-edited Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time and he is co-editor of After the Genome - A Language for Our Biotechnological Future. He and his wife live in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Preface Chapter 1: Coming to Terms with Perfection Chapter 2: God on a Good Day Chapter 3: Interpreting the Call Chapter 4: The Otherness All Around Us Chapter 5: Reason Chapter 6: Beauty Chapter 7: The Lived Body Chapter 8: The Good Life, the Good Death Chapter 9: The Biotechnology Debate Chapter 10: On Being an Oxymoron Notes Index

Hyde (communication ethics, Wake Forest Univ.) argues that humans "embody a metaphysical desire for perfection," and he aims to show this by reviewing the pertinent thinking of a very large number of writers, from ancient history to the present, in philosophy, religion, science, and the arts--in a sense, the entire "Western canon." His review of the pertinent thinking of the included writers is interesting, engaging, and informative in a way that draws the reader in. To flesh out his inquiry, Hyde goes into detail in two "case studies" that illustrate the metaphysical desire for perfection: "The Rhetorical Situation of Terri Schiavo" and the recent motion picture As Good as It Gets. VERDICT This book should be of interest to a large readership from scholars to lay readers; highly recommended for philosophy and cultural studies collections in most libraries. -- Library Journal, 2010