作者簡介

作者：(美國)斯圖亞特·雷切爾斯 (Stuart Rachels) 譯者：楊宗元

詹姆斯·雷切爾斯(James Rachels，1941-2003)亞拉巴馬大學伯明翰分校哲學教授。著有《生命的終點：安樂死與道德》(The End Of Life：Euthanasia and Morality,1986)、《由動物創生——達爾文主義的道德意義》(Created from Animals：The Moral Implications of Darwinism，1990)、《哲學的問題》(Problems from Philosophy,2005)、《倫理學能夠提供答案嗎》(Can Ethics Provide Answers，1997)。

This best-selling, concise, inexpensive text offers a clear, lively introduction of the major philosophical theories of morality, explaining why each theory has been accepted by some thinkers but rejected by others. It is widely used not only in Introduction to Ethics courses, but also in Biomedical Ethics and Business Ethics courses as a brief, affordable text for the ethical theory portion of those courses. To illustrate the theories, and to reveal their implications, important current issues such as abortion, euthanasia, the treatment of non-human animals, and famine relief are discussed in depth. With the third edition comes a new chapter on feminist ethics and new sections on Baby Theresa and Tracy Latimer (chapter 1), how one could justify saying that the practices of another culture are wrong with female genital mutilation as the example used (chapter 2), whether it is possible to prove that ethical judgments are true or false (chapter 3), and whether utilitarianism is too demanding (chapter 8). The section on Natural Law has been rewritten to include a fuller description of Aristotle's world-view with a discussion of Aristotle's world view versus modern science (chapter 4). There is a smoother introduction to chapter 11 with The Prisoner's Dilemma described more clearly.