The Elements of Moral Philosophy

This best-selling, concise, inexpensive text offers a clear, lively introduction of the major philosophical theories of morality, explaining why each theory has been accepted by some thinkers but rejected by others. It is widely used not only in Introduction to Ethics courses, but also in Biomedical Ethics and Business Ethics courses as a brief, affordable text for the ethical theory portion of those courses. To illustrate the theories, and to reveal their implications, important current issues such as abortion, euthanasia, the treatment of non-human animals, and famine relief are discussed in depth. With the third edition comes a new chapter on feminist ethics and new sections on Baby Theresa and Tracy Latimer (chapter 1), how one could justify saying that the practices of another culture are wrong with female genital mutilation as the example used (chapter 2), whether it is possible to prove that ethical judgments are true or false (chapter 3), and whether utilitarianism is too demanding (chapter 8). The section on Natural Law has been rewritten to include a fuller description of Aristotle's world-view with a discussion of Aristotle's world view versus modern science (chapter 4). There is a smoother introduction to chapter 11 with The Prisoner's Dilemma described more clearly.