The Elements of Moral Philosophy, by James Rachels

James Rachels

James Rachels was an American philosopher who specialized in ethics.-Biography:Rachels was born in Columbus, Georgia, and graduated from Mercer University in 1962. He received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, studying under Professors W. D. Falk and E. M. Adams...

 and Stuart Rachels

Stuart Rachels

Stuart Rachels is an International Master of chess and the son of the philosopher James Rachels . He tied for first place in the 1989-90 U.S. Chess Championship. Although no longer an active player, his FIDE rating is 2485, and his USCF rating is 2605.Rachels grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. He...

, is a textbook regarding the field of ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

. It explains a number of moral theories and topics, including Cultural relativism

Cultural relativism

Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and...

, Subjectivism

Subjectivism

Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it...

, Divine command theory

Divine command theory

Divine command theory is the meta-ethical view about the semantics or meaning of ethical sentences, which claims that ethical sentences express propositions, some of which are true, about the attitudes of God...

, Ethical egoism

Ethical egoism

Ethical egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds merely that it is...

, Social contract

Social contract

The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...

, Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...

, Kantian ethics, and Deontology. The book uses multiple real-life examples to better explain the theories.

James Rachels

James Rachels

James Rachels was an American philosopher who specialized in ethics.-Biography:Rachels was born in Columbus, Georgia, and graduated from Mercer University in 1962. He received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, studying under Professors W. D. Falk and E. M. Adams...

wrote the first edition in 1986. He revised the book three times, adding a chapter on "The Ethics of Virtue" in 1993 and a chapter on "Feminism and the Ethics of Care" in 1999. The fourth edition appeared in 2003, the year Rachels died. Since then, his son Stuart has written the fifth edition and the sixth edition, which was released in April of 2009. The book has been translated into Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, and Albanian. It is known for its accessibility.

External links

• http://www.jamesrachels.org/stuart/EMP.htm Stuart Rachels' discussion of the sixth edition of the book
• http://www.jamesrachels.org/ James Rachels' website