The Routledge Companion to Ethics

Another extraordinary compendium in this series which spans the specialist and the general reader. There are nearly 70 essays covering an amazing range of figures and issues, including cross-cultural studies of ethical thought in China and India alongside the Greeks, Arabs and Enlightenment figures such as Smith and Hume. It was good to see separate chapters on Mill and Sidgwick as well as a section on existentialism, which often gets left out of British philosophy. The next section addresses metaethics including questions relating to responsibility and relativism. There are contributions from social anthropology, psychology and the law and perspectives on ethics including consequentialism, intuitionism, virtue ethics and feminist ethics. Debates include welfare, rights, issues surrounding the end of life, population ethics and the environment. Finally, under current issues, there are features on free speech, poverty, war and torture. So the full scope of the theory and application is treated in this remarkable volume. It is likely to come out in paperback in a couple of years, so in the meantime you may want to order it for your local library.