Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics

This is not your typical ethics book: its sleek physical dimensions mirror Simon Blackburn's intelligent but unencumbered treatment of the main threats and origins of ethics. In Being Good, Blackburn addresses the fear that "ethical claims are a kind of sham" before sketching a road map of the history of ethics, its practical consequences, and its ultimate foundations. All this is an ambitious task for such a diminutive volume.

A professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, Blackburn is one of the giants of contemporary moral theory and a trustworthy guide through its labyrinth. He prefers parsimony to complexity--helpful for readers with only a casual acquaintance with philosophy--yet he manages to avoid trivializing his subject matter. Moreover, Being Good is wonderfully enlivened by illustrations by Paul Klee, William Blake, Eug ne Delacroix, Francisco de Goya, and even Vietnam War photography and cartoons. Blackburn concludes on a promising note: "If we are careful, and mature, and imaginative, and fair, and nice, and lucky, the moral mirror in which we gaze at ourselves may not show us saints. But it need not show us monsters, either." --Eric de Place