About the Book
The Right Thing to Do: Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy is the engaging companion reader to James Rachels and Stuart Rachels’ best-selling text, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (0-07-803824-3). It offers readable, well-argued essays on compelling issues that students are familiar with and can understand. This collection can also stand on its own as the text for a course in moral philosophy, or it can be used to supplement any introductory text.
Table of Contents:
PrefaceAbout the Authors INTRODUCTION1. A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, James Rachels 2. Some Basic Points about Arguments, James RachelsUTILITARIANISM 3. Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill 4. Utilitarianism and Integrity, Bernard Williams 5. The Experience Machine, Robert NozickOTHER THEORETICAL ESSAYS 6. The Subjectivity of Values, J. L. Mackie 7. The Categorical Imperative, Immanuel Kant 8. The Virtues, Aristotle 9. Master Morality and Slave Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche 10. Caring Relations and Principles of Justice, Virginia Held ABORTION 11. Why Abortion Is Immoral, Don Marquis 12. A Defense of Abortion, Judith Jarvis Thomson 13. On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion and Postscript on Infanticide, Mary Ann Warren ANIMALS 14. All Animals Are Equal, Peter Singer 15. Torturing Puppies and Eating Meat: It's All in Good Taste, Alastair Norcross 16. Do Animals Have Rights?, Tibor R. MachanSTARVATION 17. The Singer Solution to World Poverty, Peter SingerTHE DEATH PENALTY18. A Defense of the Death Penalty, Louis P. Pojman 19. Why the United States Will Join the Rest of the World in Abandoning Capital Punishment, Stephen B. Bright WAR, TERRORISM, AND TORTURE 20. Hellhole, Atul Gawande21. The Ethics of War and Peace, Douglas P. Lackey 22. Fifty Years after Hiroshima, John Rawls 23. What Is Wrong with Terrorism?, Thomas Nagel 24. Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb, David LubanSEX AND DRUGS 25. America’s Unjust Drug War, Michael Huemer 26. Our Sexual Ethics, Bertrand Russell 27. Monogamy: A Critique, John McMurtry 28. A Few Words about Gay Marriage, Andrew Sullivan29. Same-Sex Marriage and the Argument from Public Disagreement, David Boonin30. Alcohol and Rape, Nicholas Dixon RACE 31. Letter from the Birmingham City Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. 32. Is Racial Discrimination Arbitrary?, Peter Singer 33. In Defense of Quotas, James RachelsBIOETHICS 34. The Morality of Euthanasia, James Rachels 35. The Wrongfulness of Euthanasia, J. Gay-Williams36. The New Eugenics, Matt Ridley37. Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation, John A. Robertson38. Selling Organs for Transplantation, Lewis Burrows39. A Free Market Would Reduce Donations and Would Commodify the Human Body, James F. Childress
About the Author :
James Rachels, the distinguished American moral philosopher, was born in Columbus, Georgia. He graduated from Mercer University in Macon in 1962. He received his PhD in 1967 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He taught at the University of Richmond, New York University, the University of Miami, Duke University, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he spent the last twenty-six years of his career. 1971 saw the publication of Rachels groundbreaking textbook Moral Problems, which ignited the movement in America away from teaching ethical theory towards teaching concrete practical issues. Moral Problems sold 100,000 copies over three editions. In 1975, Rachels wrote Active and Passive Euthanasia, arguing that the distinction so important in the law between killing and letting die has no rational basis. Originally appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, this essay has been reprinted roughly 300 times and is a staple of undergraduate education. The End of Life (1986) was about the morality of killing and the value of life. Created from Animals (1990) argued that a Darwinian world-view has widespread philosophical implications, including drastic implications for our treatment of nonhuman animals. Can Ethics Provide Answers? (1997) was Rachels first collection of papers (others are expected posthumously). Rachels McGraw-Hill textbook, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, is now in its fourth edition and is easily the best-selling book of its kind.Over his career, Rachels wrote 5 books and 85 essays, edited 7 books and gave about 275 professional lectures. His work has been translated into Dutch, Italian, Japanese, and Serbo-Croatian. James Rachels is widely admired as a stylist, as his prose is remarkably free of jargon and clutter. A major theme in his work is that reason can resolve difficult moral issues. He has given reasons for moral vegetarianism and animal rights, for affirmative action (including quotas), for the humanitarian use of euthanasia, and for the idea that parents owe as much moral consideration to other peoples children as they do to their own. James Rachels died of cancer on September 5th, 2003, in Birmingham, Alabama.
Stuart Rachels is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama. He has revised several of James Rachels books, including Problems from Philosophy (second edition, 2009) and The Right Thing to Do (fifth edition, 2010), which is the companion anthology to this book. Stuart won the United States Chess Championship in 1989 at the age of 20, and he is a Bronze Life Master at bridge. His website is www.jamesrachels.org/stuart.
