The Elements of Moral Philosophy

I have used this book and its companion volume for my intro to ethics courses. I would recommend the texts for instructors who want to make use of case-studies in applied ethics. However, I have to supplement the text insofar as primary source material is overlooked. Stuart Rachels has a pretty good suggested syllabus on his website.

Pros: good for applied ethics, intuitive presentation, appropriate for 100-level courses,

Cons: lack of primary source material, no meta-ethics, poor presentations of egoism and virtue ethics ( )

This is a good introduction to the complex world of moral theory, but it remains no more than an introduction. Despite the brief length of the book, Rachels manages to cover all of the main approaches to moral theory advanced over the years, but at the expense of some detail, and he occasionally skims over some of the issues involved. Nevertheless his characterisations, particularly of virtue ethics and utilitarianism are well written and concise. Less successful is his attempt in the final chapter to lay out a moral theory of his own, which he only manages to outline very sketchily and really deserves a book of its own. ( )

This is a great text for an introductory level ethics course at a community or state college. I probably wouldn't use it to teach a university class, as it's a bit oversimplified, but Rachels does a fantastic job of explaining the major ethical theories in terms that can be understood by the non-philosopher. This text pairs up well with his The Right Thing to Do in a course that deals with applied ethics also. ( )