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Philosophy & Ethics The ethical frameworks and philosophical tools a thoughtful person uses to decide and to argue: consequences, duties, and character with their standard failure cases, justice, moral luck, the is-ought gap, death, free will, the Stoics and existentialists, lying and promises, and how to act when you are not sure which view is right.
45 cards · space to flip · 1–4 to grade · d to go deeper
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Reading list The works this deck draws on, in the order worth reading them. Cards point to a specific chapter or paper where one fits.
01 Book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? · Michael Sandel The best first book: utilitarianism, libertarianism, Kant, Rawls, and Aristotle, each taught through real cases and the objections to it. Readable in a weekend and the model for how this deck argues. 02 Book The Elements of Moral Philosophy · James Rachels and Stuart Rachels The standard short textbook. Clear chapters on each framework with its strongest objections, plus relativism, egoism, and the social contract. Use it to fill in whatever a card leaves you wanting. 03 Book Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics · Simon Blackburn Around 150 pages on the threats to ethics (relativism, egoism, determinism, the is-ought gap) and what survives them. Sharper than its length suggests. 04 Book What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy · Thomas Nagel Under 100 pages. Free will, death, right and wrong, and the meaning of life, each in a chapter that asks the question properly without pretending to settle it. 05 Book Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle The source for virtue ethics, the mean, and practical wisdom. Books II and VI are the ones this deck leans on; Terence Irwin's Hackett translation has the best notes and the Oxford World's Classics edition reads more easily. 06 Book Letters from a Stoic · Seneca, translated by Robin Campbell The most approachable Stoic primary text: short letters on fear, time, grief, and what is in your power, from a man who did not always live up to them. Read a few; do not read them in order. 07 Book Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals · Immanuel Kant Hard, and short enough to attempt. Section II holds the formulas of the categorical imperative, including the humanity formula. Read it with Sandel's Kant chapter or a guide beside you; the prose does not reward a cold start. 08 Book Reasons and Persons · Derek Parfit Hard and long; the personal identity material is Part Three (chapters 10 to 15), which can be read on its own. The teletransporter and fission cases, and the argument that identity is not what matters, are all there. 