The organization

The work is reasonably well organized into three parts. The first part talks about “threats” to ethics as something useful. The second section looks at common issues—life, death, desire, rights, and the meaning of life. The third section discusses some different frameworks that attempt to answer the question of how to live, focusing mainly on utilitarianism, social cooperation, and deontology, specifically Kant’s categorical imperative.

The first part discusses seven different ideas that suggest that ethics is useless or impractical: religion, relativism, egoism, evolutionary theory, determinism, unreasonable demands, and false consciousness. Each idea is explained and examined in simple terms, achieving its goal as a short introduction. Taken together, this section was helpful as a foundation for the rest of the book.

The remaining two sections cover common topics in ethics and notable ethical theories themselves. The book, and in particular the third section, could also have been organized in terms of ethical concepts like reason, emotion, and obligations or duty. In fact, the different theories covered in the third section do discuss each of these. Overall, the structure of the book makes sense.

The content

The content surprised me a little. I expected more about virtue ethics, but the book mainly shoots this down as an ethical foundation with significant flaws, without giving it its proper due. Several references to Confucianism were valuable to maintain a broader perspective, but eastern philosophies aren’t addressed in any detail. Today’s readers may be left wanting for a more serious discussion of virtue ethics, seeing as how Stoicism has surged in popularity in recent years. The author does mention Stoicism for its views on death, and briefly discusses Aristotle’s take on virtue, but ultimately dismisses it quickly.

One aspect of the content I found surprising was the significant coverage rights, freedoms, and obligations. The author makes a helpful distinction between positive and negative freedoms, also noting the dangers of positive freedoms’ tendency to expand. For readers outside the US, these chapters may be helpful to understand some of the ideas behind American culture and its political foundation. However, for a book on “being good,” understanding freedoms is only helpful insofar as it might make you more open-minded towards others’ lifestyles. This doesn’t necessarily help you in making decisions during life’s challenging moments.

While discussion of virtue ethics is limited, other famous and important ethical ideas are well covered, including Kantian deontology and two forms of utilitarianism. The tension between rights and utilitarian motivations is mentioned, and the author introduces Hume’s efforts to define a rule-based form of utilitarianism as a middle ground between these two different ideas. The author hints that this is one of the most practical ethical or political frameworks.

Conclusion

Overall, the book is a good introduction to ethics. It introduces the ideas of consequentialism, deontology, and virtue. The book starts admirably with an attempt to discount relativism, recognizing its uselessness in promoting useful ethical discourse. For today’s readers, the only omission is the facile treatment of virtue ethics. On the whole, however, it is a good introduction to ethics that can point the interested reader in the right direction for further study.