Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics

A short introduction to ethics that begins by taking seriously the reasons people doubt that ethics can be more than opinion. Part One examines seven threats: the death of God, relativism, egoism, evolutionary theory, determinism and futility, unreasonable demands, and false consciousness, the suspicion that morality merely serves power. Blackburn argues that none of them, properly understood, defeats ethical thinking. Part Two applies ethical ideas to birth, death, desire and the meaning of life, pleasure, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, freedom and paternalism, and rights and natural rights, touching on abortion, euthanasia and liberty. Part Three asks whether ethics has foundations. It looks at reasons, at living well and doing good, at Kant's categorical imperative, at contract and discourse theories, and at the common point of view, before a closing chapter called "Confidence Restored". The book shares the brisk, sceptical tone of Blackburn's Think, and it was reissued as Ethics: A Very Short Introduction.

It answers the common worries that ethics is relative, selfish or baseless, and shows how to think clearly about moral questions without dogma.