Glass Houses: Choosing Grace in a Judgmental World

"Most of us believe we should judge others less. Few of us manage it. Jason Brennan thinks he knows why: the problem isn't that we lack willpower or kindness. It's that we are genuinely bad at moral judgment-biased, self-deceived, tribal, and far more interested in promoting our own status than in discovering the truth. We exaggerate our virtue and inflate the faults of others. We mistake outrage for righteousness. We are not impartial referees of the moral life; we are players calling fouls on the other team. In Glass Houses, Brennan defends the neglected virtue of human grace: not merely forgiving after the fact, but declining to appraise others' character in the first place. Grace means extending goodwill as a default-treating people well without first auditing whether they deserve it. It resists the urge to publicize every fault or turn disagreement into condemnation. Grace is not indifference or naïveté. It recognizes something deeper: flawed people judging other flawed people should proceed with humility. Given our cognitive limits and our incentives to posture and punish, restraint is often wiser than righteousness"-- Provided by publisher.