Ethics

Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction introduces the issues and controversies of contemporary moral philosophy. It gets students to struggle with the big questions of morality while it also relates these questions to practical issues, especially racism, global warming, moral education, and abortion. Providing a practical method for thinking about moral issues—a method based largely on the golden rule—it is written simply and clearly throughout. College students who are new to philosophy or who have already taken an introductory-level course will benefit from its use.

• Serves as either the sole textbook for a lower-level introduction to ethics/moral philosophy course or a supplementary text for a more advanced undergraduate ethics course.
• Provides clear, direct writing throughout, making each chapter easily accessible for an engaged undergraduate student.
• Offers a philosophically rigorous presentation of the golden rule.
• Includes helpful study aids, including: bolded technical terms; boxes for key ideas; summaries, study questions, and suggested readings for each chapter; and a comprehensive glossary/index at the back of the book.
  

• Each chapter now offers additional, optional sections on more advanced topics for students wishing to dig deeper into the material (advanced topics include: Kohlberg’s moral psychology, whether morality is gendered, types of relativism, early Greek ethics, Hume, and the prisoner’s dilemma).
• Other improvements include: better chapter organization, clearer explanations, improved examples, new names for key arguments, and a better Kindle version.
• An updated and improved EthiCola instructional program (with a score-processing program, teacher’s manual, and class slides), which can be downloaded from the web for free (from www.harrycola.com/ec or www.harryhiker.com/ec).

Harry J. Gensler, S.J., is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. Some of his other books include Formal Ethics (1996), Ethics: Contemporary Readings (2004), Anthology of Catholic Philosophy (2005), Historical Dictionary of Logic (2006), Historical Dictionary of Ethics (2008), Ethics and the Golden Rule (2013), Ethics and Religion (2016), and Introduction to Logic, Third Edition (2017).