Introducing Ethics

A Beginner's Guide Through Six Major Thinkers

Lee Braver

• Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9781647922757
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Introducing Ethics guides us through the history of Western ethics, starting with Socrates's effort to use reason for questions about what it means to be a good person and what we should do. We then explore three major 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 and builds on the others. We conclude with two twentieth-century challenges to Socrates's approach: Carol Gilligan's feminism and Jean

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Are You a Good Person?
• Chapter 1: Dialogues: Socrates’s Form of Goodness
• Chapter 2: Utilitarianism: Mill’s Math of Happiness
• Chapter 3: Deontology: Kant’s Pure Duty
• Chapter 4: Character Ethics: Aristotle’s Human Flourishing
• Chapter 5: Feminism: Gilligan’s Ethics of Care
• Chapter 6: Existentialism: Sartre’s Morality of Free Commitment
• Conclusion: No Conclusions
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• Titles of Related Interest Available from Hackett Publishing