Practical Ethics

The third edition of this classic textbook is completely revised and updated featuring a new chapter on climate change.

Peter Singer (Author)

9780521707688, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 21 February 2011

356 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.47 kg

"...This third edition keeps the lucid style and provocative arguments of its predecessors, but with a more up to date perspective into current ethical challenges. This makes Practical Ethics not only an ideal text for university courses, but also for anyone who wants to dedicate some serious thinking into how she or he ought to live.... remains a relevant and welcome contribution to ethics."
--Laura Cabrera, Institute for Biomedical Ethics, Basel University, Metapsychology Online Review

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live.

1. About ethics
2. Equality and its implications
3. Equality for animals?
4. What's wrong with killing?
5. Taking life: animals
6. Taking life: the embryo and the fetus
7. Taking life: humans
8. Rich and poor
9. Climate change
10. The environment
11. Civil disobedience, violence and terrorism
12. Why act morally?

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]