Ethics An Overview [Hardcover]

This is the definitive companion to the study of ethics. It provides students with an accessible, comprehensive and philosophically rigorous introduction to the major thinkers, issues and debates. Ideal for use on undergraduate courses, but also of lasting value for postgraduate students, the structure and content of this textbook closely reflect the way ethics is studied.

Thematically structured, the text provides a historical overview of the subject and a comprehensive introduction to the main branches of ethics: meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. The book also includes coverage of key aspects of value-theory and key issues concerning agency and moral responsibility. It applies ethics to contemporary issues such as climate change, the environment, development, poverty and war. Crucially, the book encourages students to do ethics for themselves, equipping the reader with a wide-ranging grasp of the discipline in all its central areas of contemporary study and reflection.

Robin Attfield's cogent and thorough analysis is supplemented by student-friendly features, including chapter summaries, study questions, exercises, and a comprehensive guide to further reading and other resources.

The book under review is helpfully divided into fairly small chapters and each is provided with a short bibliography and selections of questions, some of which dig deeper than a mere reproduction of the information given. This procedure invites and encourages readers and students to formulate or rethink their own positions and opinions. The author himself takes a clear stance in the debates given...In many cases, the author provides strong arguments for his point of view...The segments of the text in which meta-ethics is discussed are particularly well-developed and convincing. In the reviewer's opinion, Attfield's work contains sufficient material to provide the core thesis for even an advanced course on these topics...This book offers well-developedl)