Humanities & academic writing
Philosophical Ethics: A Guidebook for Beginners
George W. Matthews
George W. Matthews · 2020 PDF edition · English · Published 2020
An introduction to philosophical ethics, reasoning, moral theories, freedom, justice, inequality, human rights and environmental ethics.
- Learning stage
- College introduction
- Prerequisites
- No prior philosophy course required; suitable for introductory college ethics.
- PDF pages
- 185 in this file
- Editorial review
- 2026-10-29
Contents
Choose the section you need. Listening availability is shown for each section.
I Some Preliminaries
I Some Preliminaries
The Examined Life
A Little Bit of Logic
Fallacies and Biases
II Ethics Culture and Religion
II Ethics Culture and Religion
Relativism
Religion and Ethics
III Reconstructing Norms
III Reconstructing Norms
Egoism
Social Contract Theory
Utilitarianism
Kant and the ethics of duty
IV Applied Ethics
IV Applied Ethics
Theory in Practice
Euthanasia
Liberty and its Limits
Crime and Punishment
Animals and Ethics
Ethics and the Environment
Sources and permissions
The author and publisher remain the source of this textbook. Permission information applies to the specific files in this edition.
Author, publisher, and discovery sources
Authors: George W. Matthews
Publisher: George W. Matthews
- Discovered through Open Textbook Library: Source record · Checked 2026-10-29
- Discovered through Open Textbook Library: Source record · Checked 2026-10-25
CC BY-SA 4.0
Philosophical Ethics: A Guidebook for Beginners, George W. Matthews, copyright 2020, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original icon attribution to Arthur Shlain and all source credits retained. Original PDF unchanged; no endorsement implied.
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Checked 2026-10-29