In The Practice of Ethics, Hugh LaFollette argues that ethics, like medicine, is fundamentally practical; the aim of ethics is not just to further ethical knowledge but to improve how people live. He employs relevant insights from other academic disciplines and uses arguments and examples from contemporary issues such as race relations, euthanasia, gun control, and animal rights, to create a coherent narrative that is theoretically and pragmatically grounded. Timely and engaging, this introductory text is an outstanding guide to the field of applied ethics, and is an excellent companion to the new third edition of LaFollette's authoritative anthology Ethics in Practice.

Hugh LaFollette is Marie and Leslie E. Cole Chair in Ethics, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. He is author of Personal Relationships: Love, Identity, and Morality (Blackwell, 1995), co-author of Brute Science: The Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation (1996), and editor of several other volumes, including The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory (Blackwell, 1999) and Ethics in Practice: An Anthology (third edition, Blackwell, 2007).

Acknowledgements.

Introduction.

Part I: Learning to Theorize:.

1. The Ethical Impulse.

2. A Tale of Two Theories.

3. Using and Sharpening the Theoretical Tools.

4. Relativism.

Part II: The Moral Status of Groups:.

5. Racism.

6. Affirmative Action.

Part III: Life and Death:.

7. Religion and Morality.

8. Death, Dying, and Physician-assisted Suicide.

9. Slippery Slope Arguments.

Part IV: Autonomy, Responsibility, and Risk:.

10. Autonomy, Children, and Paternalism.

11. Punishment.

12. Gun Control.

Part V: Living Morally:.

13. Everyday Morality.

14. Character, Virtue Ethics, and Pragmatism.

15. Animals.

Part VI: The Demands of Morality:.

16. World Hunger.

17. Is Morality Demanding?.

18. Egoism: Psychological and Moral.

Part VII: Thinking Ahead:.

19. Moral Speculations.

Index