Ethics and Experience

Timothy Chappell's Ethics and Experience: Life Beyond Moral Theory is an introduction to moral philosophy, including meta‐ethical and normative approaches. Except for insisting on the objectivity of ethics, Chappell mostly points out strong and weak points of various views instead of arguing for one against the others. The book is original, insightful and provocative enough for moral philosophers to learn from it. But it seems intended more for upper‐level university students (a preface which mentions audiences would have been helpful); the book will serve students well, although for them the topics could sometimes have been better supported and the explanations simpler. Chs 1–4 set the stage. Philosophy is the use of reason to answer worldview‐shaping questions. Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with ‘How should life be lived?’. It deals not just with what we should do, but also with how we should do it and what sort of persons we should be. It deals with how to live our lives as human beings, not as club members or squash‐players (areas with their own rules): ethical norms generally should override other norms

Club · Epistemology · Moral philosophy · Moral psychology · Moral reasoning · Normative · Normative ethics · Objectivity (philosophy) · Sociology · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications