Progressive Living |
"In our societies people compete primarily for material goods, which have no intrinsic worth. Without inequality—and without the false values it engenders—they could compete instead in excellence. They could strive to outdo each other in knowledge, discovery, or creative expression. Then their competitiveness, instead of hindering perfection, could spur them on. This is a further argument for distributive equality: By encouraging human competitiveness to aim at true goods, it makes an unattractive trait serve valuable ends."
—Thomas Hurka
On the Importance and Reputation of Thomas Hurka
Who is Thomas Hurka, and why should anyone care?For many, 20th century ethics has come to be seen as a dismaying record of confusion and error. As the proper foundations of a life well lived are found in ethics, this made for a very dangerous and destructive cultural climate indeed. Hurka's Perfectionism (1993) was one of the very few works that was neither confused or erroneous. By doing much to properly establish the foundations of ethics, he has also pointed the way to living the most meaningful life possible. Moreover, as the proper foundations of civilization itself are also found in ethics, Hurka's work, in a sense, properly grounds civilization. No mean achievements, it seems to us.
A Brief Biographical Sketch
Hurka's parents were both Czechoslovakian. His father was an attorney. His mother, a Jew, spent World War II in England, where she earned a degree in social work. They had met briefly before the war, and then again after the war, and subsequently married. Having lost all of her immediate, and much of her extended, family in the war, Hurka's mother felt the need to make a fresh start in another country, and the couple emmigrated to Canada.Speaking no English, Hurka's father initially worked in a department store warehouse, and later went into business.Thomas Hurka was born August 10, 1952, and grew up in a suburb of Toronto. Something of the familial value system can be glimpsed in this passage in Perfectionism:"My parents . . . products of the liberal, cultured Czechoslovakia of the interwar years . . . taught me the intrinsic worth of knowledge, achievement, and the arts, as against mere amusement or material acquisition."At the age of 14 he attended a downtown school affiliated with the University of Toronto, called University of Totonto Schools. Entry was by competitive examination. The school encouraged participation in a wide variety of activities, such as academics, sports, the arts, and debate. Hurka has remarked: "I think we all came out admiring all those activities . . . . It's not just that different people did each of those, but that most everyone accepted and respected all of them; there were no cliques." When later, in the early '90s, he came to write the final version of Perfectionism, these experiences made their influence felt in the form of the very inclusive theory of value found there.During high school, Hurka had already developed an interest in philosophy; then, in his first year at the University of Toronto, he took two philosophy courses, two English, and two history. The philosophy courses reinforced his earlier interest, and he chose it as his major.The philosophy department was at that time historically oriented, and he received an exposure to philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, Spinoza, and Hegel—all exponents of a philosophical school of ethics sometimes known as "perfectionism", the gist of which is probably best communicated to American readers with the term "self-actualization". Hurka has remarked: "In the perfectionist tradition I found a theoretical grounding for my own deepest convictions."Hurka went on from UT to study at Oxford, where he took a B. Phil. in 1977, and a D. Phil. in 1980. His theses for both degrees concerned Perfectionism. (His thesis supervisor was R. M. Hare).Hurka was a tutor at Oxford in 1978, a lecturer at the University of Calgary in '78-'79, and from '79 to '84 worked as an assistant professor there. From '84 to '92 he was an associate professor, and became a full professor in '92. He has recently gone on to the University of Toronto, his old alma mater. Hurka wrote a weekly ethics column, distributed across Canada, for The Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto from 1989 through 1992. In addition, he had a weekly spot on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) national television show called "Midday" from 1999 through 2000.He is married to Terry Teskey.In addition to his work on ethics proper, Hurka has also written on sustainable development, global warming, abortion, and nationalism.His principal publications to date include:
- Virtue, Vice, and Value (2001)Pefectionism (1993)
- Principles: Short Essays on Ethics (1993). (This publication collects some of the newspaper columns that appeared in the Canadian press.)
A more complete list of Professor Hurka's publications may be found at: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/philosophy/gradbull/2001/faculty%20cvs/HurkaCV.pdf
(PL is greatly indebted to Professor Hurka for providing much of this biographical detail.) |