Ethics

Introductions

A general introduction: Ben Dupré – 50 ideas: Ethics

Simon Blackburn – Being Good

The best free Ethics textbook. This provides an excellent introduction to Ethics for those doing EE/EPQ on "The ethics of..."

Mark Dimmock and Andrew Fisher, Ethics for A-Level

https://www.openbookpublishers.com/htmlreader/978-1-78374-388-9/main.html

Extension and primary sources

Excellent extension for A-Level and IB students with multiple articles on Metaethics, Normative Ethics and Applied Ethics

PhilosophyNow Ethics Bookazine (view online)

A superb collection of primary source material is available in Ethics: Ethics (Oxford Readers), ed. by Peter Singer (Oxford, 1994)

Primary sources: major ethical theories

Virtue Ethics

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (trans. Crisp, Irwin (2nd edn.), or Ross (OUP World‟s Classics, revised L. Brown)

Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Blackwell, 1978)

A. MacIntyre, After Virtue (Duckworth, 1981)

Utilitarianism

J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, especially chs 2 and 4

Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (CUP, 1979)

TED talk - "The why and how of effective altruism" by Peter Singer: https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_singer_the_why_and_how_of_effective_altruism

J.J.C. Smart and B. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (CUP, 1973)

Deontology

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited by M.J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Meta ethics

David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals

G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (CUP, 1903)

G.E. Moore, Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), ch. 7 'Intrinsic value'.

W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Clarendon Press, 1930)

Mark Schroeder, Noncognitivism in Ethics (London: Routledge, 2010), chs. 6-8.

Applied Ethics

Opinion: Should we use gene editing to produce disease-free babies? A scientist who helped discover CRISPR weighs in

Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save (New York: Random House, 2006)

Extension: degree-level readers and companions

Copp (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (OUP, 2006)

Darwall, Philosophical Ethics (Westview, 1998)

Kagan, Normative Ethics (Westview, 1997)

LaFollette (ed.), Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory (Blackwell, 2000)

J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Penguin, 1973)

Peter Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Blackwell, 1991)

David Wiggins, Ethics (Penguin, 2006)

Extension: noteworthy journal articles

KORSGAARD, Christine, 'Two Distinctions in Goodness', Philosophical Review, 92 (1983): 169-95. 

LANGTON, Rae, 'Objective and Unconditioned Value', Philosophical Review, 116 (2007): 157-85. 

Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, 'Toward Fin de Siècle Ethics: Some Trends', The Philosophical Review, 101, no. 1 (1992): 115-89

GIBBARD, Allan, 'Wise Choices, Apt Feelings', in S. Darwall, A. Gibbard and P. Railton, eds., Moral Discourse and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 179-98.

O'NEILL, Onora, 'Consistency in Action', in her Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 81-104.

O'NEILL, Onora, 'Universal Laws and Ends in Themselves', in her Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 126-44.

STRAWSON, Peter F., 'Freedom and Resentment', Proceedings of the British Academy, 48 (1962): 1-25. Reprinted in his Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Routledge, 2008).

FRICKER, Miranda, Epistemic Injustice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), chs. 1 & 7.