Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Applied ethics is the largest area of growth in philosophy, and we here feature a variety of original pieces designed to capture the breadth and depth of the writing in the general field today. Our aim has been to select the best philosophers we could on some of the topics we thought likely to be of interest to a broad public of specialists and non-specialists alike, and we were mindful to include excellent young people as well as established and noteworthy figures in the group of contributors. The result is a volume that we think is representative of the best writing in applied ethics today, one that not only attempts to cover selected topics of great contemporary import but also tries to do so in a way consistent with the high standards found in other areas of analytic philosophy. While we have not given complete coverage to everything that today goes under the title of “applied ethics,” we have aimed to include most of the main issues that are usually taken to fall under that heading. Where we were unsure of the lasting import of a particular issue, we excluded it; where we were unsure whether an issue warranted extended treatment, we excluded it; most especially, where we felt ourselves unable to find an excellent philosopher to undertake a topic, even when we thought that topic worthy of inclusion, we excluded it. We have striven for quality even at the cost of a more complete ... log in or subscribe to read full text