An Introduction to Ethics

The book opens with a definition and division of ethics, explaining the scope of the science and its relation to psychology, politics, and theology. Book I, “The Psychological Basis of Ethics,” studies man as natural and man as moral. It discusses the physical nature of human beings, heredity, race, sex, age, individual constitution, psychical life, cognition, feeling, volition, and the emergence of moral consciousness. Book II, “Ethics Proper,” develops the substantive moral theory. It begins with the supreme law of duty and reviews Epicurean theories, utilitarianism, Stoical theories, English Stoical moralists, perfectionism, and Kantian ethics. It then classifies moral obligations into social duties and personal duties. Social duties include justice, obligations to society, family, state, church, obligations to individuals, rights, occupancy, labor, contract, forfeiture of rights, and benevolence. Personal duties include bodily, intellectual, and moral culture. The final part treats virtue as a stable habit of intellect, emotion, and will, including the education of conscience, emotional discipline, negative virtue, and positive virtue.