What Should I Do?: Philosophers on the Good, the Bad, and the Puzzling

Life throws ethical questions at us every day, some momentous and difficult, some fairly trivial and easily worked out. To help the average person deal with such puzzling issues, the website AskPhilosophers.org brings together a panel of distinguished philosophers who use their knowledge of the history of philosophy, as well as their own life experiences and native ingenuity, to respond to questions sent in from all over the world.

What Should I Do? is a collection of some of the most interesting questions about ethics to have appeared on the website during its first five years. The questions addressed here come from young and old, from the educated to the barely schooled. The philosophers offer down-to-earth, often personal responses--indeed, stimulating, engaging, and candid conversations--that point readers in a helpful direction and refine further reflection. The book explores questions about how to behave toward one's friends, members of one's family, those we love, and even toward oneself. It looks at the moral dilemmas faced in professional relationships, in our treatment of animals, in our use of the environment, and even in our relation to God. Broadening still further, we find questions about the morality of a nation's actions, such as its right to punish its citizens or to wage war against other nations. Finally, the book considers some of the many questions people have about the nature of morality itself.

A delightfully fresh look at philosophical questions, What Should I Do? will encourage readers to think a bit more deeply about the moral questions they frequently encounter, and will provide them with the tools to do so.

Alexander George is Professor of Philosophy at Amherst College. He is the editor of What Would Socrates Say? Philosophers Answer Your Questions About Love, Nothingness, and Everything Else and the author of a humor book Sense and Nonsensibility: Lampoons of Learning and Literature (with Lawrence Douglas). He founded AskPhilosophers.org in 2005.