Ethics A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

self-and-identity

• It is an enterprise of self-knowledge… philosophers do not escape the climate, even as they reflect on it.

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• The foundations of moral motivations are not procedural rules but the feelings to which we can rise. Benevolence is the indispensable root of it all.

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faith-and-doubt

• Religion gives mythical clothing and authority to a morality that is just there to begin with. Myth engages our imaginations with death, desire, happiness, and good.

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• The overall story of atonement is morally dubious, suggesting justice can be satisfied by the sacrifice of an innocent for the sins of the guilty.

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mortality

• If belief in life after death is abandoned, the Stoics seem right that death is not to be feared—yet we do exist when dying begins.

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• Death is worse than life; it is bad that people suffer, and worse if a culture turns a blind eye to their suffering.

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