Take your students from echo chambers to ethical reasoning.
In today’s polarized classrooms, students grapple with moral theory and opposing viewpoints—even as they share many deep concerns about the world they live in. Informed by decades of teaching experience, Ethics for Everyone is the first introductory ethics text to address today’s course challenges with an authentically intersectional approach—not as an add-on, but as a structuring principle.
With specially commissioned readings and an emphasis on the issues students care about—such as AI and automation, free speech and indoctrination, and sexual morality—Ethics for Everyone helps students understand how your class applies to the world around them.
Invites students from every background into the conversation
Authors Carol Hay and Julinna Oxley weave diverse perspectives throughout their presentation of the traditional canon rather than relegating them to sidebars, and students across the political spectrum will find their concerns taken seriously rather than caricatured or ignored.
Engages students with a direct, conversational voice
Ethics for Everyone aims to be philosophically precise without sounding dry or inaccessible. The authors recognize that students are more likely to engage with difficult material when the prose feels human, readable, and occasionally even funny—so they speak to them directly.
Applies ethical arguments across disciplines to the real world
The book is grounded in a historical approach to the canon of analytic philosophy but integrates insights from psychology, feminist theory, political theory, sociology, literature, and behavioral economics when appropriate, without requiring instructors to have training in those disciplines.
Connects ethics to the growing field of moral psychology
Psychology is now one of the fastest-growing majors, and many students are deeply interested in questions about emotion, cognition, moral development, and the brain. A dedicated chapter on moral psychology connects these interests to classical philosophical debates while introducing contemporary work on embodiment, intuition, emotional cognition, and moral development.
Features a dedicated chapter on nonideal theory—the first ethics text to do so
Addressing a major gap in existing textbooks, this chapter introduces the most significant development in ethics of the last three decades. Anchored in the ideal/nonideal distinction, it centers power, oppression, and inequality while integrating feminist and anti-racist frameworks as lenses that deepen—not replace—the traditional canon.
Hello from the authors
Take a peek behind the book:
Carol Hay and Julinna Oxley met as grad students at a conference in 2005, and were instantly drawn to each other’s shared excitement for the emerging work in analytic liberal feminism at the time. Their collaboration and friendship has spanned over two decades and has brought them to very different parts of the country, teaching students from very different backgrounds. As the authors work together over Zoom and in person, their writing process is fueled by caffeine, mint Life Savers, and the desire to make moral theory matter to the students they actually teach.
Ethics for Everyone is coming soon!
If you’re interested in reviewing preliminary materials, please sign up for early access and review opportunities.
Learn more and book a discovery call:
Are you interested in learning more about this forthcoming text, becoming a paid reviewer, or class testing? Book a call with Mary Dwyer, philosophy marketing manager, to learn more.
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