The Practice of Ethics

The Practice of Ethics is an outstanding guide to the burgeoning field of applied ethics, and offers a coherent narrative that is both theoretically and pragmatically grounded for framing practical issues.

• Discusses a broad range of contemporary issues such as racism, euthanasia, animal rights, and gun control.
• Argues that ethics must be put into practice in order to be effective.
• Draws upon relevant insights from history, psychology, sociology, law and biology, as well as philosophy.
• An excellent companion to LaFollette's authoritative anthology, Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Third Edition (Blackwell, 2006).

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).