This is another outstanding edition in the Oxford Philosophical Texts series. This is a first rate book for both students and experts on Hume. It contains an excellent annotated edition of the Enquiry itself, excellent background information on Hume, a very nice introduction to the Enquiry written by Tom Beauchamp, a leading Hume scholar and moral philosopher, an outstanding guide to the Hume literature, and a good glossary. All for a very reasonable price.

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (EPM) is one of the cornerstone texts in Western philosophy and is written with Hume's characteristic combination of incisive analysis and charming style. Hume's goal is to describe the bases of human moral conduct. As stated by Tom Beauchamp, EPM is descriptive rather than prescriptive. While Hume clearly has strong opinions about what constitutes appropriate moral conduct, in EPM his focus is really on moral psychology rather than moral direction. This approach is what would now be called metaethical. As with his work on epistemology, Hume is also concerned with establishing the limits of human reason. In Hume's analysis, reason has an important but limited role in moral judgements, crucial for reaching appropriate judgements but does not establish the basic principles for moral judgement. Hume sees morality as based on an interesting interplay of moral sentiments, which he sees as intrinsic to human nature, self-interest, and social utility. The importance of each of these varies with considerably in different social settings. In family life and close personal relationships, moral sentiments dominate but the force of moral sentiment weakens as the range of socieity increases. In more complex social settings, Hume sees a form of utilitarianism as restraining self-interest. For Hume, specific moral systems are variable, somewhat situation dependent, and historically contingent. Thought provoking and very readable.

David Hume is a genius philosopher. His basic principle-- knowledge can only come from experience. His ideas on morality are indicative of a rich understanding of the mind and its surrounding world. This book should be read by anybody interested in morality, religion (its viability) and experience. He is a fascinating thinker.

If you are looking for a non-superstitious, non-mystical guide to moral living, you can do no better than this classic by one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. Elegantly written. Simple and yet profound. It is just what I was looking for a few years ago and it has served me well ever since.

This book was Great! everyone should read it

Orlans et al have made a novel and invaluable contribution to the ethical debate concerning "The Human Use of Animals". As a biomedical researcher of fifteen years , I appreciated the frank objectivity that the authors brought to such morally complicated issues as animal experimentation, modern animal farming practices, and religious sacrifice. Each of the case studies presented invokes considerable soul searching and further challenges the reader to question whether we as humans are doing enough to meet our moral obligations to nonhuman animals. These moral obligations, highlighted in the various case studies, are not derived from any legalistic or heady philosophical meanderings but rather stem from an intrinsic sense of right and wrong. The case studies presented in this and hopefully future volumes of "The Human Use of Animals" should become required reading in biomedical ethics curricula.

This is the most recent edition of a first rate textbook on the difficult topic of medical ethics. The authors' approach is neither to attempt to derive a set of guidelines from abstract moral theory nor to be completely empirical in the sense of simply assessing what clinicians and researchers do when dealing with moral issues. The approach of this book is to extract a series of important principles from the best aspects of practice and then to generalize these principles. The 4 basic principles set out by the authors are respect for autonomy, non-maleficience, beneficience, and justice. The book is divided into a series of well written and integrated chapters covering the basic rationale for the authors' approach, each of the principles, professional-patient relations, and concluding with a set of chapters covering basic moral theories and how the authors' approach fits in with moral theory and competing approaches.

This book has many virtues. The basic approach is strong and practical. Each principle and the exposition of each principle is embedded in real clinical moral problems. The authors make the interesting and important point that none of these principles have priority over another and that balances need to be sought between these principles. This book is simultaneously an excellent exposition of a strong approach to medical ethics and useful reference source to clarify thinking. The bibliography is excellent. Some of the chapters, notably the sections on autonomy and those on justice, are outstanding. The quality of writing is clear and the sections are distinguished by clarity of thought. The authors set themselves objective of writing a book that would combine a high level of rigor and would be useful, reaching a mixed audience of physicians, researchers, and others concerned with medical ethics. They have succeeded.

Book Review PRINCIPLES OF BIOMEDICAL ETHICS Tom L. Beauchamnp and James F. Childress

"You can't tell a book by it's cover." Don't you believe it! Principles of Biomedical Ethics by Beauchamp and Childress is every bit as formidable as it's cover might suggest. That is not to say that the book is poorly written or inadequate in any way. It is just that this reviewer is a student, whose professor, at the end of the course confessed to the class the the text was indeed a demanding work requiring proportional effort on the part of the student. Granting that, it was the best of several texts he had examined.

After setting the stage, in chapter one with a discussion of approaches to ethics, the authors, in chapter two, deliniate in detail, eight classical ethical theories, which form the foundation of the study. Through liberal use of examples, the authors reveal that all theories have both weaknesses as well as strengths and that to rely on one theory to the exclusion of others is indeed a hightly questionable approach to ethical decision making.

In the subsequent six chapters, the authors continue with a wealth of case studies, elaborate on the importance of autonomy, privacy and dangers of paternalism; they discuss the elements of nonmaleficence and beneficence as essential elements in the Hippocratic oath. Distictions are made between killing and letting die. Arguments are made for and against the use of medically administered nutrition and hydration. Balancing prima facie norms to provide treatment and for truth telling are examined and the extenuating circumstances when these seemingly basic tenets may not be appropriate are discussed.

The authors have not dodged the knotty problems of availability of organs for transplantation, rationing of scarce treatments and health care resources, costs of health care or the concepts or theories of justice as they relate to health care. The appendix consists of ten case histories. There is a abundance of footnotes at the end of each chapter sufficient to satisfy the most rigorous student.

This is not a book for the casual reader. But for someone desiring an in depth treatment of current issues in health care from the standpoint of the physician, chaplain or health care administrator, I recommend this book without reservation.

Ernest G. Barr

Two of the most reknowned scholars in bioethics have assembled a high quality collection of scholarly material which is a necessary resource for those seriously engaged in bioethical inquiry concerning death. Many facets of the issue of death and dying are treated: the definition of death, ethics of euthanasia, how we should care for the dying, etc. It is a most up-to-date text which continues the 25-year-old heated discussion into the mechanics and meaning of human death.

This updated edition of PE continues to be an excellent presentation of ethical theory. The changes I suspect reflect suggestions from instructors using previous editions. It has the quality and depth from before but shows the advantage of being used in many ethics courses. It is improved as a result. In a relatively small text it is still jam-packed with a great range of vocabulary with sterling excerpts from historical and contemporary philosophers. Theories are described and then exemplified. Students should be good readers to use this text.

Hume is rightfully an important philosopher. Philosophy had been mainly a metaphysical/rationalistic field until Hume (in addition to Locke and Berkeley) came along. His basic philosophy is this: induction is the only principle by which we can have knowledge, but induction is fundamentally flawed. Thus, there is no belief of which we can be totally certain of. Hume even questions whether we can be as sure as Descartes was when he asserted "Cogito Ergo Sum". To Hume, one could consistently maintain that the "self" was just a bunch of thoughts in succession. Hume believed that there were no strict identities in nature, but only resemblences which the mind tends to treat as identities. He also treated ideas as imperfect images of our experiences.

The problem I have with Hume is on resemblence and his treatment of ideas. I agree with him that there are resemblences in nature which humans tend to treat as the same--but then what is this resemblence based on? The nominalists have to account for why resemblence is there in the first place. Perceived identity must have its basis in reality somehow. And his treatment of ideas is just plain wrong--our ideas are not just images, although they can include images.

I obviously can't give a complete criticism of Hume's philosophy in a review, so if anyone wants to discuss this with me just email me. But I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in philosophy--any complete philosophical theory must challenge or incorporate Hume if it is to succeed.

This is a good edition of the first but fundamental book published by Hume in 3 volumes (1 and 2 in 1739; 3 in 1740) dedicated to the methodical study of knowledge, passions and moral, through experience and practical observation. It is with Hume that empiricism (following Locke and Berkeley) reaches its complete expression as a "modern" classical system, against previous dogmatic visions of philosophy. According to Kant, Hume awoke him from the dogmatic dream......
With Hume, english illustration comes to a definitive expression. Through his opus, empiricism is systematized and acquires a new dimension that expands its influence on all fields of philosophy. Previous conceptions about the theory of knowledge, ethics, politics, esthetics, and the philosophy of religion, all are transformed or renovated by Hume. In spite of his critics, Hume's system dwelled with different topics of modern interest: positivism, psychology, nominalism, critical skepticism, determinism, agnosticism, moral philosophy, political economy, etc.
No serious philosopher after Hume, has been able to avoid a careful look at his system. So if you are a student or scholar of the subject matter, I highly recommend this edition of Hume's seminal work.

This is a superb edition of one of the basic works in Western philosophy. Designed to be used by both casual and serious students of philosophy, this edition contains the text of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (EHU) and a series of other sections that provide background and further directions for studying Hume. Included are an excellent precis of the EHU, a first rate annotated bibliography concerning works by and about Hume, considerable background material on Hume, and excellent notes to the text of the EHU.

The EHU is a concise and charmingly written presentation of Hume's views of the nature and particularly the limitations of human knowledge. The EHU presents Humes basic concepts of human thought, human pattern recognition, and then proceeds to Hume's revolutionary analysis of the problem of induction. Hume exposes our limitations in establishing certain cause and effect relations. Hume's analysis of this problem and its corollaries leads to ultimate skepticism about our ability to know the external world with certainty and undermines much of the basis for religion. Hume presents his ideas in an attractive style that owes much to famous 18th century essayists like Addison.

A fundamental work and very readable work.

I teach business ethics at the college level, and have found Ethical Theory and Business to be very helpful. Basically, B and B attempt to do three things. First, they offer an introductory essay, covering some of the main distinctions in both meta-ethics (e. g. whether morality is objective or subjective) and normative ethics. This essay is the weakest part of the book, I think, because they seem to offer caracatures of most relativist leaning views (e. g. egoism), and do not adequately criticize Kantian moral philosophy. But even so, the essay does explain many useful distinctions in philosophical ethical thought. Second, B and B offer both classic readings in Business Ethics (e. g. Milton Friedman), as well as really up to date readings, by many of the leaders in the field (e. g. Freeman, DeGeorge, etc). This is quite a good selection of readings, although they have omitted a few classic essays (like Galbraith's 'The Dependence Effect', and a few subjects which might have been useful, such as the question of whether one can attribute moral agency to corporations at all. Even so, B and B include more than any course in Business Ethics could cover. Third, B and B provide a Web site with excersizes and instructor aids. Depending on how much one uses the Web, this may be helpful too. So generally speaking, although no anthology is perfect, Beauchamp and Bowie have put together an admirable collection.

This book is a critical reader, and it's probably the most highly used text in business ethics today. Those who reviewed this book negatively sound like people looking for a fun, non-academic overview of the field. If so, this book isn't it. These are articles published in top academic journals, edited for readability, by scholars who are addressing the fundamental issues in a wide range of topics. It's meant to expose the span of the field and still give students (not light readers) exposure to contemporary literature that touches on the most salient points. It's meant to be a starting point to deeper research in any given topic. As such, the book is a complete success. B & B do a great job (here as in other ethics compendiums) of providing a framework that makes it easy for a professor to expose her students to the field in one swoop. They do a fine editorial job, stripping the articles of padding, and they work hard to keep the offerings up to date (passing on older articles that are superceded by fresh insights that touch on contemporary challenges and technologies; look for something relating to the corporate scandals of this last year in the next edition). If you are a student looking for an overview on business ethics, this book is the correct starting point. If you are someone looking for light reading about corporate corruption, with illustrations and full-color photos, stick to People magazine.

I really enjoyed this anthology, especially the section on sexual harassment. Some of the subjects were hard going, but, it was a good introduction to business ethics.