This text aims to enable its users to make a constructive difference, in both word and deed, in problematic moral situations and real-life moral controversies. The book treats ethics as primarily a practical subject that requires a wide range of practical skills and approaches.

The aim of A Twenty-First Century Ethical Toolbox is to enable its users to make a constructive difference, in both word and deed, in problematic moral situations and real-life moral controversies. It's an ethics textbook with a difference. Ethics in this book is not a purely academic or historical or theoretical subject - though some of those themes are here as well - but primarily a practical subject that requires a wide range of practical skills: from paying attention to values to judging like cases alike; from learning how to "break out of the box" to learning how to move beyond rhetoric to real dialogue. Similarly, in approaching the moral issues of the day, this book offers you the tools to work out constrcutive, creative, and mutually-agreeable next steps - to actually make progressr on the issue - not just a tour of the controversy as it stands. Primarily authored by Anthony Weston, the Toolbox also includes gripping and provocative short selections from essayists, activists, and even a few philosophers.

Preface
WELCOME TO THE ETHICAL TOOLBOX
I. GETTING STARTED
1. Ethics as a Learning Experience
A. The Need for Open Minds
B. Three Easy Routes to a Closed Mind (And How to Avoid Them)
C. Reading: C.P. Ellis interviewed by Studs Terkel
D. Exercises and Notes
2. Ethics and Religion
A. Religion's Contributions to Ethics
B. Religion's Limits in Ethics
C. Thinking for Yourself
D. Exercises and Notes
II. VALUES
3. Paying Attention to Values
A. Definitions: Values and Moral Values
B. Guidelines
C. Reading: Edward Abbey, "The Great American Desert"
D. Exercises and Notes
4. Families of Moral Values
A. Three Families of Moral Values
B. Mapping Moral Debates
C. Exercises and Notes
5. Traditional Ethical Theories
A. Utilitarianism
B. Theories of Right Action
C. Theories of Virtue
D. Exercises and Notes
6. When Values Clash: Theoretical Approaches
A. Utilitarian Strategies: Finding a Single Measure
B. Non-Utilitarian Strategies: Prioritizing Values
C. Limits of Theoretical Strategies
D. Exercises and Notes
7. When Values Clash: Integrative Approaches
A. Another View of Moral Conflicts
B. Integrative Methods
C. When to Hold Firm
D. Reading, Roger Rosenblatt, "How to End the Abortion War
E. Exercises and Notes
III. TOOLS FOR CRITICAL THINKING IN ETHICS
8. Finding the Facts
A. When Facts are at Issue
B. Inferences
C. Exercises and Notes
9. Watching Words
A. Loaded Language
B. When Terms are Unclear
C. When Terms are Contested
D. Exercises and Notes
10. Judging Like Cases Alike
A. Consistency is not Easy
B. How to Restore Consistency
C. Reinvented Cases
D. Reading: Colin McGinn, "Speciesism"
E. Exercises and Notes
IV. TOOLS FOR CREATIVITY IN ETHICS
11. Multiplyign Options
A. The Need for Inventiveness in Ethics
B. How to "Get Out of the Box"
C. More Provovations: "What if...?" Thinking
D. Exercises and Notes
12. Problem-Shifting
A. Reframing Problems
B. Making the Problem and Opportunity
C. Exercises and Notes
V. PUTTING ETHICS INTO ACTION
13. Picking the Right Tools
A. How Goals Vary
B. Matching Tools to Goals
C. Exercises and Notes
14. Dialogue: Learning by Talking
A. How to Have a Fruitless Debate
B. How to Have a Useful Discussion
C. Reading: The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice, "Common Ground Rules"
D. Exercises and Notes
15. Service: Learning by Helping
A. Calls to Service
B. Vists to a Homeless Shelter
C. Reading: Ram Dass and Paul Gorman, "Compassion: The Witness Within"
D. Exercises and Notes
VI. CONTEMPORARY DEBATES
16. Sexuality
A. Who Cares About Sex?
B. Can We Build on Sexual Common Ground?
C. "Perversion"
D. Reading: Jason Schultz, "Bachelor Party
E. Exercises and Notes
17. Abortion
A. Background
B. Key Values
C. Can We Get the Abortion Debate Unstuck?
D. Reading: Rayna Rapp, "XYLO"
E. Exercises and Notes
18. Business and Professional Ethics
A. Ethics and the Professions
B. Ethics and Business
C. Reading: Lisa Newton and David Schmidt, "Obviously a Major Malfunction"
D. Exercises and Notes
19. Poverty and Welfare
A. Background
B. Shared Values
C. Understanding Poverty
D. Reading: Rosemary Bray, "So How Did I Get Here?"
E. Exercises and Notes
VII. THE EXPANDING CIRCLE
20. Animals
A. Why Should We Care About Animals?
B. What Can We Do?
C. Reading: Lori Bauston, "Animal Resuce"
D. Exercises and Notes
21. Environmental Ethics
A. Wake-Up Calls
B. Beyond Anthropcentrism?
C. Integrating Environmental Values
D. Reading: Violet Woodsorrel Oxalis, "It's a Little Wild Out There"
E. Exercises and Notes