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Books

Moral Thinking

David McKay reviews Francis Snare’s The Nature of Moral Thinking.

If you want pre-packaged answers to your ethical questions, do not read this book. If you want to know what to think about abortion, euthanasia, violence, ecological exploitation or any other contemporary hot potato, you will not find answers here. On the other hand, if you want to be trained to think critically about ethical issues, to examine arguments in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses, to consider how some of the great philosophical minds of the past justified their positions and sought to refute opponents, then this book will provide an excellent starting point.

Snare’s purpose is to analyse the ways in which different ethical schools have argued for their distinctive views, rather than to expound those views or apply them. Thus he does not provide historical accounts of, for example, Utilitarianism or Emotivism, but instead explains how Utilitarians and Emotivists think about ethics.

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