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Introducing Ethics: A Beginner’s Guide Through Six Major Thinkers
Introducing Ethics takes us through the history of Western ethics, beginning with Socrates’s attempt to apply reason to questions about what it is to be a good person and what we ought to do. We then examine three leading moral theories—John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, Immanuel Kant’s deontology, and Aristotle’s character ethics—as if they were a large-scale Socratic dialogue, where each raises objections to and builds on the others. We end with two twentieth-century challenges to Socrates’s enterprise in Carol Gilligan’s feminism and JeanPaul Sartre’s existentialism.
“Lee Braver’s Introducing Ethics is a fantastic introduction to the field. Braver examines some of the most influential pictures of morality that we have inherited from the history of philosophy. In doing so, he highlights the strengths and weaknesses of those moral pictures, leaving the reader to decide for themselves what they think constitutes a good life. Introducing Ethics will be an invaluable resource to students, first-time teachers of ethics, and anyone interested in learning about the nature of morality and human flourishing.”
—Benjamin Berger, University of Hartford
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Introducing Ethics: A Beginner’s Guide group
Introducing Ethics takes us through the history of Western ethics, beginning with Socrates’s attempt to apply reason to questions about what it is to be a good person and what we ought to do. We then examine three leading moral theories—John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, Immanuel Kant’s deontology, and Aristotle’s character ethics—as if they were a large-scale Socratic dialogue, where each raises objections to and builds on the others. We end with two twentieth-century challenges to Socrates’s enterprise in Carol Gilligan’s feminism and JeanPaul Sartre’s existentialism.
Reviews:
“Lee Braver’s Introducing Ethics is a fantastic introduction to the field. Braver examines some of the most influential pictures of morality that we have inherited from the history of philosophy. In doing so, he highlights the strengths and weaknesses of those moral pictures, leaving the reader to decide for themselves what they think constitutes a good life. Introducing Ethics will be an invaluable resource to students, first-time teachers of ethics, and anyone interested in learning about the nature of morality and human flourishing.”
—Benjamin Berger, University of Hartford
“Lee Braver’s Introducing Ethics is such a marvelous, clear, delightfully engaging text that I knew I’d be assigning it to my classes as soon as I perused its pages. Braver is a stupendous writer. He explains complicated and confusing ideas with beauty and ease. Readers will understand the nuances and be intrigued by Braver’s examples and humor. If readers sometimes find Socratic dialogues perplexing, Utilitarianism troublesome, or Deontology remote or abstruse, Braver finds ways of making these concepts relevant, stimulating, and genuinely worth thinking about. His way of creating humorous hypotheticals and asking readers to consider questions about the real world is immensely inviting. He teaches students to probe these ideas with philosophical curiosity and sophistication and shows professors how we can present these concepts to our own classes in ways that really bring students into the discussion.”
—Jerry Piven, Rutgers University
About the Author:
Lee Braver recently retired from his position as Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida. He is the author of six books, including A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism and Heidegger: Thinking of Being.
