Professor Rioux has brought together a number of important ethical writings into a single, convenient volume. While together they do not constitute all that students of moral philosophy should read and study, even at the introductory level, they do supply a necessary complement to such major works as Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. From Plato and the Stoics and Epicureans, through the Christian ethicists of the Middle Ages, up to writings that have defined prominent contemporary accounts of ethics (the deontology of Immanuel Kant and the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, ) this compendium supplies the backdrop needed to frame our own questions about right and wrong and to begin to answer such questions. For this is the work of moral philosophy
