Ideas have consequences. And sometimes those ideas can be squeezed in to slogans, slapped on bumper stickers and tweeted into cyberspace. These compact messages coming at us from all directions often compress in a few words entire ethical systems. It turns out that there's a lot more to the ideas behind these slogans--ideas that need to be sorted out before we make important moral decisions as individuals or as societies. In this revised and expanded edition of Steve Wilkens's widely-used text, the author has updated his introductions to basic ethical systems:

• cultural relativism


• ethical egoism


• utilitarianism


• behaviorism


• situation ethics


• Kantian ethics


• virtue ethics


• natural law ethics


• divine command theory

He has also added two new chapters:

• evolutionary ethics


• narrative ethics

With clarity and wit Wilkens unpacks the complicated ideas behind the slogans and offers Christian evaluations of each.