Ethics: The Basics

by John Mizzoni

The Basics provides beginning students with a solid grounding in basic ethical principles, theories and traditions, as well as a set of conceptual tools necessary to think about ethics and make ethical decisions.

Genres: Philosophy

232 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2009

Reviews

[Cameron Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This introduction to ethics (mostly normative but also a little meta-) is decent but not great. It discusses ethical universalism and relativism, virtue ethics, natural law ethics, social contract ethics, utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics, and care ethics. Its discussions of these normative ethical theories are united by an exploration of their metaethical foundations, with a focus on their conceptions of human nature, which I found particularly interesting. I liked the selection of theories and the fact that it covered so many. However, I give this book only three stars for two main reasons: (1) Maybe this is just a matter of preference, but it was a little too basic. I wished it had gone more in-depth at various points. (2) More importantly, and not a matter of preference, I think the book was lacking in terms of examples. More examples would have been useful, and the particular examples provided were not particularly illuminating, especially because there was often little disagreement among the various theories. For example, Mizzoni concludes that according to every single normative ethical theory covered, drinking while pregnant is immoral. Examples like that are not very helpful for a reader trying to understand the distinctive nature of each theory.