Life throws ethical questions at us every day, some momentous and difficult, some fairly trivial and easily worked out. To help the average person deal with such puzzling issues, the website AskPhilosophers.org brings together a panel of distinguished philosophers who use their knowledge of the history of philosophy, as well as their own life experiences and native ingenuity, to respond to questions sent in from all over the world.

What Should I Do? is a collection of some of the most interesting questions about ethics to have appeared on the website during its first five years. The questions addressed here come from young and old, from the educated to the barely schooled. The philosophers offer down-to-earth, often personal responses--indeed, stimulating, engaging, and candid conversations--that point readers in a helpful direction and refine further reflection. The book explores questions about how to behave toward one's friends, members of one's family, those we love, and even toward oneself. It looks at the moral dilemmas faced in professional relationships, in our treatment of animals, in our use of the environment, and even in our relation to God. Broadening still further, we find questions about the morality of a nation's actions, such as its right to punish its citizens or to wage war against other nations. Finally, the book considers some of the many questions people have about the nature of morality itself.

A delightfully fresh look at philosophical questions, What Should I Do? will encourage readers to think a bit more deeply about the moral questions they frequently encounter, and will provide them with the tools to do so.

Your questions answered -- by a panel of philosophers

Intriguing, personal, and controversial responses to moral problems

Ranges over love, sex, death, religion, politics, and war

Accessible to all readers -- no knowledge of philosophy required

Over 80 thoughtful questions

Drawn from the popular website askphilosophers.org

Introduction
1: The Personal
Children · Love and Sex · Abortion · Emotion · Sincerity · Death · Suicide
2: The Public
Medicine · Business · Sports and Games · Interacting with Others · Environment · Animals · Religion
3: The Political
Justice · Rights · Government · Law · Punishment · War
4: The Nature of Morality
Moral Truth · Moral Knowledge · Moral Theories · Putting Morality into Practice
Biographical Information
Suggested Readings
Index

Edited by Alexander George , Amherst College, MA

Alexander George teaches at Amherst College. Before arriving at Amherst, he was an undergraduate at Columbia, a graduate student at Harvard, and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He is the author (with Daniel J. Velleman) of Philosophies of Mathematics (Blackwell). He is also the author (with Lawrence Douglas) of a humor book, Sense and Nonsenibility: Lampoons of Learning and Literature (Simon and Schuster). He founded AskPhilosophers.org in 2005.