Designed to immediately engage students and other readers in philosophical reflection, the new edition of Ethical Argument: Critical Thinking in Ethics bridges the gap between ethical theory and practice. This brief introduction combines a discussion of ethical theory with fundamental elements of critical thinking--including informal fallacies and the basics of logic--and uses case studies and practical applications to illustrate concepts. Author Hugh Mercer Curtler presents a carefully formulated critique of ethical relativism, encouraging students to reason along with him and to...

The author's primary purpose in this short book is to clearly define the nature of value and restore it to a central place in discussions of ethical and aesthetic problems. He begins the book with a broad cultural perspective on the issue of postmodernism in general, then takes a closer look at recent attempts to reduce values to evaluation, to deny their objectivity. The central chapter focuses on the question, "What Is Value?" after which Curtler discusses values in the fine arts and literature, concluding with the question of values in education.