Sub-title: A Short Introduction to Ethics
Reading philosophy texts can be dense, with lots of vocabulary to grasp and concepts to unpack. This slim book attempts to simplify the task, covering Aristotle, Kant, Plato and others. The focus of the book is to address criticism of different ethical philosophies. I don't know that I grasped all of its arguments, but it exercised my thinking and helped me understand some of the issues in the field.
Quotes:
"The Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen has calculated that there are over 100 million "missing women"..birth rates indicate that here should be slightly more females than males [but there aren't] because of inequalities in medical care, and sustenance as well as deliberate infanticide."
"Many philosophers argue, and I agree, that belief in the afterlife is an indefensible metaphysics; a false picture of how we as persons relate to our physical bodies. It imagines the soul as only accidentally and temporarily lodged in a body, like a person in a car. Whereas many philosophers think of the distinction between mind and body as much more subtle than this. They might say it is much more like the distinction between a computer program and the machine it runs on. There is a distinction, sure enough, but not one that gives you any license to imagine the software running, but without any hardware at all."
Published: Read: July 2026 Genre: Philosophy
