The Virtues of Our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness, and Other Bad Habits Paperback - 2013

"Works on ethics often float above the flux and confusion of everyday life. Not this engaging book! Brimming with lively examples, Westacott's meditation reveals the bright side of some of our darker practices, such as gossip, sick humor, and rude behavior. While the writing is breezy, the analysis is both rigorous and lucid. By the turn of the last page, the delighted reader is sure to have developed a more nuanced and perhaps forgiving grasp of some of our most common transgressions."--Gordon Marino, editor of Ethics: The Essential Writings

"Philosophy should encompass not only the summits of life-and-death issues but the lowlands and occasional quicksand of everyday manners. Emrys Westacott is an ideal guide to this terrain, especially to the ethics of guilty verbal pleasures. The Virtues of Our Vices is a provocative exploration of the big issues underlying small talk."--Edward Tenner, author of Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences

"With insight and rigor, Emrys Westacott shows that what is small is not necessarily trivial, that analytic precision is compatible with fully accepting the messiness of real life, and that what matters is often lost in the cracks of the obvious, big moral debates of the day. This is a refreshingly original work which promises to bring quotidian ethics the wider attention it deserves."--Julian Baggini, cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Philosopher's Magazine

"If you have ever been accused of being rude when you were merely stating the truth, or called a gossip because you like to dwell on other people's actions, Westacott is for you. His linked studies of everyday vices offer elegant analysis of the goods that lurk in behavior that is usually condemned. This wise book is practical philosophy in the best sense."--Mark Kingwell, --Mark Kingwell, author of In Pursuit of Happiness: Better Living from Plato to Prozac

"Emrys Westacott writes in an accessible way, and often with humor, about topics that are of wide interest. He is right that the ethical questions that confront ordinary people in everyday life are important, even if philosophy has tended to ignore them."--David Benatar, editor of Ethics for Everyday

"In this enjoyable book, Westacott shows that the question of whether rudeness, snobbery, and other vices are wrong is more nuanced and delicate than it might appear."--Caspar Hare, author of On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects