Christopher Panza, PhD, is a Professor of Philosophy at Drury University. He teaches Confucianism, ethics, and existentialism. He holds a PhD in Philosophy.

Adam Potthast, PhD, is Dean of Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Transfer at Minnesota State College Southeast. He holds a PhD in Philosophy.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Conventions Used in This Book 2

What You're Not to Read 3

Foolish Assumptions 3

How This Book Is Organized 4

Part 1: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please 4

Part 2: Surveying Key Ethical Theories 4

Part 3: Applying Ethics to Real Life 4

Part 5: The Part of Tens 4

Icons Used in This Book 5

Beyond the Book 5

Where to Go from Here 6

Part 1: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please 7

Chapter 1: Approaching Ethics: What Is It and Why Should You Care? 9

Knowing the Right Words: The Vocabulary of Ethics 10

Focusing on should and ought 10

Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality 11

Putting law in its proper place 12

Identifying Two Arguments for Being Ethical 14

Why be ethical 101? It pays off! 14

Why be ethical 201? You'll live a life of integrity 15

Committing Yourself to the Ethical Life 16

Taking stock: Know thyself 16

Building your moral framework 17

Seeing where you need to go 18

Chapter 2: Butting Heads: Is Ethics Just a Matter of Opinion? 21

Subjectivism: Basing Ethics on Each Person's Opinion 22

Right for me and wrong for you: The subjectivist position 22

Recognizing that subjectivism can't handle disagreement 23

They're always right: Subjectivists make bad houseguests 25

Determining what subjectivism gets right 26

Cultural Relativism: Grounding Ethics in the Group's Opinion 27

Discovering what it means to be a cultural relativist 27

Understanding why cultural relativism is always so popular 28

Living in many worlds: Some problems with cultural relativism 29

Looking at cultural relativism's lack of respect for tolerance 30

Noting cultural relativism's successes 32

Emotivism: Seeing Ethics as a Tool of Expression 33

Expressing yourself: Booing and cheering in ethics 33

Arguing emotionally: A problem for emotivists 34

Getting motivation right: A victory for emotivism 36

Chapter 3: Exploring Connections between Ethics, Religion, and Science 37

Clarifying the Relationship between God, Religion, and Ethical Codes 38

Knowing the difference between God and religion 38

Contemplating the diversity of religious ethical codes 39

Because God Said So: Understanding Divine Command Theory 41

God's authority: Considering why God gets to be in charge 42

Figuring out what happens when divine commands conflict 43

Plato's big challenge: Questioning what makes something ethical 45

When Ethics Gets in the Way of God: Introducing Kierkegaard 47

The Abraham dilemma: When God tells you to kill your child 47

Embracing a God who's beyond ethics 49

Overcoming your despair: Can faith take you beyond ethics? 49

When God Gets in the Way of Ethics: Introducing Nietzsche 51

Portraying religion as an ethics of weakness 51

Leaping over faith: Ethics as inner strength rooted in self-creation 52

Examining Nietzsche's new idea: The ethics of inner strength 54

The Age of Science: Figuring Out If Ethics Can Exist in a Secular World 55

Staying silent on the spiritual 55

Defining ethics in a materialistic world 56

Establishing good behavior without heaven or hell 57

Evolution and Ethics: Rising Above the Law of the Jungle 58

Seeing how selfish genes can promote unselfish behavior 59

Noting the irrelevance of (most) evolutionary theory to ethics 61

Part 2: Surveying Key Ethical Theories 63

Chapter 4: Being an Excellent Person: Virtue Ethics 65

The Lowdown: Virtuous Character Matters 66

Discovering why character matters 66

Connecting character with action 67

Seeing character as a way of life 67

Virtue: Settled habits towards the good 68

Linking Virtue to Cultivating Your Human Nature 69

How virtue is linked to human nature 69

Cultivating your nature is good and good for you 71

Examining what cultivated human nature looks like 72

Virtuous immersion in your social world 73

Responding virtuously to the universe itself 75

Asking Whether Virtue Guarantees Happiness 76

Aristotle: Virtue is not enough for human flourishing 77

Aurelius: Virtue is all you need to flourish 78

Figuring Out How to Acquire the Virtues 79

Can virtues really be taught? 79

Apprenticing yourself to a virtuous master or two or three 80

Aristotle: Shaping how we experience the world 81

Aurelius: Correcting how we see the world 85

Assessing Criticisms of Virtue Ethics 88

It's difficult to know which virtues are right 89

Virtues can't give exact guidance 90

Virtue ethics is really self-centered 91

Being virtuous is a lucky crapshoot 92

Chapter 5: Maximizing the Good: Consequentialist Ethics 95

Paying Close Attention to Results: Consequences Matter 96

Consequences matter to everyone 96

Consequences ethically trump principles and character 98

Surveying What Makes Consequences Good 99

Utilitarianism says: More pleasure, less pain (please!) 100

Beethoven or beer: Recognizing why some pleasures are better than others 102

Putting Utilitarianism into Action 104

Whose happiness counts? 104

How much happiness is enough? 105

Focusing On Two Different Ways to Be a Successful Utilitarian 106

Directly increasing the good through your actions 106

Indirectly increasing the good by following the rules 109

Exploring Traditional Problems with Utilitarianism 112

Challenge 1: Justice and rights play second fiddle in utilitarianism 112

Challenge 2: Utilitarianism is too demanding 114

Challenge 3: Utilitarianism may threaten your integrity 115

Challenge 4: Knowing what produces the most good is impossible 116

Chapter 6: Doing Your Duty: The Ethics of Principle 119

Kant's Ethics: Acting on Reasonable Principles 120

Defining principles 120

Noting the difference between principles and rules 121

Making sense of Kantian ethics: The struggle between nature and reason 122

Autonomy: Being a law unto yourself 125

Living by the Categorical Imperative: Reasonable Principles 126

Looking behind actions: Maxims are principles 127

Examining imperatives 130

Surveying the Forms of the Categorical Imperative 132

Form 1: Living by universal principles 132

Form 2: Respecting everyone's humanity 135

Applying the Categorical Imperative to Real-Life Dilemmas 136

Using the Formula of Universal Law to distinguish imperfect from perfect duties 137

Applying the Formula of Humanity to ethical topics 141

Scrutinizing Kant's Ethics 142

Unconditional duty: Can you lie to a murderer? 143

Guiding actions in real moral dilemmas 143

Making enough room for feelings 144

Accounting for beings with no reason 145

Chapter 7: Signing on the Dotted Line: Ethics as Contract 147

Creating Ethics with Contracts 148

Reviewing Hobbes's state of nature: The war of all against all 149

Escaping the state of nature: Enter the sovereign! 151

Moving to the modern form of social contracts 152

Restructuring Social Institutions According to Rawls's Theory of Justice 153

Taking stock of the original position and its veil of ignorance 154

Arriving at the liberty and difference principles 155

Beyond the Dotted Line: Criticizing Contract Theory 158

But I never signed on the dotted line! 159

Libertarianism: Contracts make people lose too much liberty 160

Communitarianism: Challenging the veil of ignorance 161

Chapter 8: Turning Down the Testosterone: Feminist Care Ethics 163

The Feminist Challenge: Traditional Ethics Is Biased toward Men 164

De Beauvoir: How socialization shapes our thinking 164

Getting a grasp on the feminist approach 166

Seeing how bias seeps into your life 168

Exploring how bias infects ethics 169

A case study of male bias: Kohlberg's theory of moral development 170

Considering Gilligan's criticism of Kohlberg's model 173

Surveying a New Feminist Ethics of Care 178

Putting relationships first 179

Letting feelings count: Cultivating care 180

Embracing partiality 182

Care avoids abstraction 183

Further Developing the Notion of Caring 183

Caring requires a deep and reciprocal bond 184

Jumping into another's skin: Engrossment 185

Moving from me to you: Motivational displacement 185

Closing the loop: The need for reciprocity 186

Considering the Politics of Caring 187

Assembling the basic components of caring 188

Embracing the political dimension of care 189

Reviewing Criticisms of Care Ethics 190

Care ethics and public life: An uneasy fit 190

Do some relationships really deserve care? 192

Could care ethics harm women? 193

Chapter 9: Global Morality: Examining Non-Western Ethics 195

Thinking Differently: Why Cross-Cultural Ethics Matters 196

Avoiding Ethnocentrism: Seeing Ethics as Embedded in Cultural Contexts 196

Cultivating Relationships: Confucian Ethics 197

Why relationships? Understanding the big picture 197

Embodying ren: Building excellent relationships 199

The ethical importance of learning 199

Mirroring good role models 200

Developing the virtues to support ren 202

Confucian dedication to developing others 204

Reducing...