Applied Ethics A Non-Consequentialist Approach

Recent years have seen the revival of the application of moral philosophy to contemporary practical problems, and a corresponding explosion of books on the subject. Most of these books, however, defend approaches that are consequentialist or specifically utilitarian in nature. Applied Ethics, and its companion volume Moral Theory, provide a viable alternative to consequentialist orthodoxy. Applied Ethics focuses the central concepts of traditional morality - rights, justice, the good, virtue, and the fundamental value of human life - on a number of pressing contemporary problems, including abortion, euthanasia, animals, capital punishment, and war. Applied Ethics and Moral Theory, make an important contribution to contemporary ethical debates, which will be useful both to undergraduates and professional philosophers.

David S. Oderberg is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Reading. A graduate of the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford, he is author of The Metaphysics of Identity over Time (1993); co-editor, with Jacqueline A. Laing, of Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics (1997), and editor of Form and Matter: Themes in Contemporary Metaphysics (Blackwell, 1999).