Customer Reviews

Ethics For Dummies

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I loved this book! I think I read it from cover to cover in less that three days!! I used this book as preparation for an ethics class that I had to take in college. To be honest, I was not thrilled with the idea of taking an Ethics class; I am an Engineering mayor, and I am not a big fun of this kind of classes. However, this book really got me excited about ethics, It made me think and question my ethical foundations.

For the title, I was hesitant for reading it, I wanted to read something more serious. But do not let the title fool you!! it really condenses the same information that you find in a more academic book, but combining it with a healthy doses of humor. Because the authors of this book used a more informal and relaxed tone, I really learned from it. I remember more from this book that my actual ethics textbook.

Bottom line, this is a fantastic introductory book for ethics, they really tried to not being bias about the topics covered in this book( which, believe me, it is very hard task in the ethics field!), and the best of all it is that greatly helped me to aced this my ethics class!

"Ethics for Dummies" is a very helpful book. It has several strengths:

1. It is highly accessible for undergraduates. The design of each chapter gives concrete examples, bullet points, "warnings" about problems related to theories, special "remember" messages to focus on key themes, "ponder this" icons to raise issues of concern, and a delightful set of "Far Side" like cartoons to open each chapter. It is a "fun read" with some very serious content. Don't be fooled by the reader-friendly style. The content provided is substantive. Professors Panza and Potthast definitely know their ethical theory.

2. It is comprehensive and multi-cultural. The authors cover the bases from meta-ethics and normative ethics to applied ethics (i.e. biomedical, environmental, professional, human rights based, sexuality focused, and in dialogue with the emerging animal rights conversation). They also attend to frameworks often neglected in introductory ethics books such as a "feminist care ethics," questions of free will versus determinism as a context for ethics, as well as Confucian ethics and the "ethics as harmful" criticisms coming from Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Taoism.

3. It is independently structured. That is, one can go to a single chapter and understand the analysis without reading the rest of the book. The writers intentionally organized the project so that each chapter is comprehensible without references to other chapters. If additional references are helpful, the writers explicitly direct readers to the appropriate sections in other chapters for further clarification.

As an undergraduate ethics professor, I often face a problem. My students don't read the more complex primary and secondary sources I assign without highly intentional "reader review" paper requirements or computer message board commentary assignments. When they do the reading, they are often confused because critical analysis of texts is challenging work. This "Ethics for Dummies" book is precisely the kind of aid which would benefit them. I encourage instructors to review it as a source to help students genuinely grasp the material on an introductory level.

This is an excellent book. The "For Dummies" books are always informative, but credit must go to Christopher Panza and Adam Potthast for writing a book that is not only informative, but interesting, humorous (where appropriate), and thought-provoking as well.

Ethics is a pretty intense subject, but Panza and Potthast approach the subject matter in a way that is fun and engaging. For those who haven't studied ethics, this book gives a very accessible introduction that uses real-life examples to explain difficult theories.

Others who have studied ethics will learn something as well. Panza and Potthast have done an incredible job not only listing and explaining particular ethical theories (which one could expect in any book that introduces ethics), but also providing critiques and counterarguments against those same ethical theories. I found Chapter 5 "Seeing Ethics as Harmful" the most interesting, as Panza and Potthast outline and explain the ethics-questioning theories of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and the ancient Chinese Taoists. You get a sense that these two authors really know their "stuff" so-to-speak, and they do an excellent job of presenting it.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this book, whether or not you've studied ethics previously.

I still remember my first philosophy class fondly. We were required to read no less than four texts: an anthology of primary source material covering the bulk of Western ethical thought from Aristotle to J.S. Mill, a secondary source to supplement and help us navigate that quite difficult reading, Confucius' Analects, which is often neglected in classical treatments ethics, and finally, Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals -- just to test whether or not that foundation we had been building for the past fourteen weeks was worth anything in the final analysis. My Professor for that class was none other than Chris Panza, one of the authors of this book. Thankfully I can report that he and Adam Potthast have brought the same lucid and thought provoking process to Ethics for Dummies that kept me from drowning at sea years earlier.

This primer does numerous things well, but as with any philosophy text, one must keep its intended audience in mind. I've since gone on to receive my B.A. and M.A. in philosophy, taking many ethics courses along the way. Consequently, Ethics for Dummies is not intended for me. Much to its credit, however, I was still capable of benefiting from it. This is primarily due to two of its virtues that I wish to highlight. First, the exemplary job Ethics for Dummies does in orienting the more difficult surrounding philosophy. Anyone who has had experience teaching a class knows how daunting it can be to establish a course plan that is coherent and evolves naturally without throwing the students out to sea from day one. And while committing just this error is especially easy in a philosophy class, this book does a commendable job of orienting the reader by focusing, first, on some basic ethical vocabulary and concepts (i.e. the difference between is and ought), and then delving into some of the big picture questions that inevitably confront ethical investigations (i.e. are one's ethical commitments simply a "matter of opinion?" and related questions of relativism and moral skepticism). My sense is that the novice will benefit most from these first 92 pages of material, since she likely has no idea who Kant was or the significance of his Categorical Imperative to the history of philosophy, but she likely is concerned with what significance, say, religion and differing conceptions of God play on ethical evaluation, since she has no doubt formed judgments to this effect prior to reading any philosophy.

Secondly, the book's scope, which not only covers and does justice the major figures in Western ethical thought, but also considers with equal weight thinkers in the Eastern tradition. In this respect I particularly benefited Chapter 13's treatment of Environmental Ethics, which I didn't know much about previously but had always piqued my interest. Again, Ethics for Dummies excels at orienting the reader: "Central to thinking in moral terms about environmental problems are questions about value. Specifically, you need to think about the kind of value that the nonhuman world has and whether that type of value demands moral recognition" (247). The study that follows tests the reader's intuitions about whether the environment has merely "instrumental" value, understood as valuable insofar as humans are able to use and benefit from it, or whether the environment has "inherent" value, or value independently of how humans assess and use it. Throughout Chapter 13's survey of the more complicated philosophical stances like Anthropocentrism and Sentientism that come to undergird our intuitions surrounding nature's (inherent or instrumental) value, the book also does well in referencing particular advocates of these philosophies, such as Aldo Leopold and his "land ethic" (258). Finally, like any good philosophical endeavor, the book then spends considerable time problematizing each of these approaches to answering the question of the nonhuman world's "value," leaving the final judgment up to the reader. Only in this case, unlike me some years ago, the reader is spared the 1,200 word essay to solve the unsolvable that no doubt would be issued in a classroom environment.

I found the book explanations of virtue ethics is really interesting and easy to understand compared to other scholar. It provides me with basic idea of ethics. Good starting for those who have a minimal view of ethics.