Business and Money    151

scolded, punished, stopped, or forced to do anything. In short, you’re not being asked what
exactly should be done in response to anyone’s action; you’re only being asked to determine
whether an action is morally right or wrong.

BUSINESS AND MONEY

1. Ashley Madison is an online dating service for people who want to have extramarital
affairs. At its peak, it boasted of almost 40 million users in over 50 different countries.
But in July 2015, anonymous hackers announced they had stolen Ashley Madison’s
entire database, containing names, addresses, records of credit card transactions, and
more—including information on people who had paid Ashley Madison a $19 fee to
have all of their information deleted from the company’s databases. Accusing the com-
pany of various fraudulent practices, the hackers demanded that the owners take down
the web site permanently. They did not demand money or other compensation. The
company acknowledged that it had been hacked but refused to take down the site. The
hackers carried out their threat to release all of the information about the site’s users.
Marriages and careers were ruined. At least one person committed suicide after being
exposed as a user of the site. Evaluate the company’s decision to refuse the hackers’
demands.
2. The infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 killed 146 garment workers in New
York City. The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, Max Blanck and Isaac
Harris, had failed to maintain safe working conditions in their factory: There was no
sprinkler system, some of the stairwells could not be opened from the inside, the fire
escape was so rickety that it would collapse if there were too many people on it, and
the fire hose inside the building was so old that it had rotted. When a fire broke out
on one of the upper floors of the building, some twelve dozen women were burned
alive or forced to jump to their deaths. Blanck and Harris worked on the top floor of
the building, but they escaped by climbing onto the roof and jumping to an adjoining
building. Evaluate Blanck and Harris’s act of allowing working conditions in their fac-
tory to become so dangerous.
3. By the year 2000, Houston-based energy company Enron was one of the largest
companies in the United States. What few people knew then, though, was that
Enron’s success rested in part on fraudulent and illegal accounting practices. In
August 2001, one of the company’s vice presidents, Sharon Watkins, emailed
CEO Kenneth Lay to warn him that the company was about to collapse because of
these practices, with disastrous financial consequences for many people. Lay met
privately with Watkins and promised to have the company’s lawyers investigate,
and he secretly considered having Watkins fired for causing trouble. Watkins never
took her concerns to law enforcement or the public, but she turned out to be right:
in October 2001, a series of scandals rocked the company, ultimately leading Enron
to file bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. Enron’s shareholders lost tens of billions
of dollars, and the company’s 4,000 employees lost their jobs. Evaluate Watkins’s
action of warning Lay, but not anyone else, about the danger posed by Enron’s
fraudulent accounting practices.
152    APPENDIX 2  •   ADDITIONAL CASE STUDIES

4. Around the turn of the century, Indian pharmaceutical companies gave international ef-
forts to fight HIV/AIDS a major boost. They began manufacturing generic versions of
anti-retroviral drugs that had been developed by private companies in the United States
and Europe. In 2000, before the Indian companies entered the market, those drugs cost
about $10,000 per patient per year. Once Indian firms began to manufacture generic
alternatives, the price plummeted to around $140 per patient per year, enabling orga-
nizations like Doctors Without Borders to provide life-saving medicines to many more
people. Although these drugs were still patented in the United States and Europe, Indian
law permitted Indian companies to manufacture them without paying royalties to the
Western pharmaceutical companies that had developed the drugs. Those Western phar-
maceutical companies therefore viewed the Indian firms’ manufacturing as theft of intel-
lectual property. Evaluate the Indian firms’ (legally permissible) action of manufacturing
generic versions of anti-retroviral drugs without paying royalties to the drugs’ inventors.
5.  Entrepreneur Kim Dotcom founded Megaupload in 2005 to allow people all over
the world to upload, store, and share digital content. Eventually, the company’s sites
allegedly hosted some 12 billion files for over 100 million users and received about
50 million visits per day from around the world, raking in hundreds of millions of
dollars. In January 2012, however, the U.S. government shut down the site, accusing it
of facilitating digital piracy, and arrested Dotcom on various charges. According to the
government, as well as an independent anti-piracy organization, the material shared
through Megaupload’s sites included a great deal of copyrighted media, such as music
and movies. Google had cut off ad services to Megaupload’s sites in 2007 due to the
high levels of pirated materials on the site’s servers. Assuming that Megaupload really
did facilitate the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials, and that Kim Dotcom knew
this, evaluate Dotcom’s action of creating and maintaining the site.

WAR AND PEACE

6. As a soldier in the U.S. Army during the Iraq War, Private Bradley Manning had access
to databases containing classified information. Manning came to believe that the public
needed to see this information in order to understand the horrors of the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. After contacting and being ignored by the Washington Post and the
New York Times, Manning leaked over 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables and
various other files to Wikileaks, an anti-secrecy group, in 2009 and 2010. Wikileaks
published the documents online for all to see, as Manning expected. Besides the diplo-
matic cables and other confidential messages, the files included videos of deadly U.S.
airstrikes. One video, for instance, showed a U.S. attack helicopter mistakenly firing
on journalists during a 2007 airstrike in Baghdad. The United States charged Manning
with a range of crimes, from failure to follow Army regulations to “aiding the enemy.”
Manning pleaded guilty to some of these charges and entered no plea to the others,
including the charge of aiding the enemy. He says that he only released documents that
he thought would embarrass, but not harm, the United States. Evaluate Manning’s act
of leaking these classified documents to Wikileaks.
 War and Peace    153

7. There was no time for Lt. Heather Penney and Col. Marc Sasseville to load their F-16
fighter jets with ammunition or missiles before they took off from Andrews Air Force
Base on September 11, 2001. That left only one way for the fighter pilots to fulfill their
mission of bringing down United Airlines flight 93: they were going to ram their jets
directly into the hijacked plane. They considered ejecting before the planes collided.
They rejected that plan, however, because it would mean that if the jets missed the
airliner, there would be no way to stop it from reaching Washington, D.C. Fortunately
for Penney and Sasseville, the passengers on flight 93 forced the hijackers to crash the
plane themselves, so the fighter pilots didn’t have to go through with their suicide mis-
sion. Evaluate Penney and Sasseville’s action of taking off with the intent to ram flight
93, as ordered, to stop the airliner from reaching Washington, D.C.
8. Following the collapse of the Han dynasty toward the end of the second century, China
fell into a prolonged and enormously destructive civil war. One of the major players in
this war was a general named Guan Yu. Early in the war, Guan and two companions,
Liu Bei and Zhang Fei, swore a solemn oath to regard one another as brothers and
never to do anything to betray their friendship. Later in the war, Guan was captured
by Liu Bei’s powerful enemy, Cao Cao. Cao spared Guan’s life and enticed him into
serving in Cao’s army by offering him generous gifts and titles. After serving Cao
long enough to repay his mercy and generosity, however, Guan informed Cao that
he was leaving his service and rejoining Liu Bei. By supporting Liu Bei against Cao
Cao, Guan almost certainly prolonged the bloody civil war, leading to a great deal of
additional death and suffering throughout China. Evaluate Guan’s action of leaving
Cao’s service and rejoining Liu Bei.
9. During its invasion of the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip in 2014, the Israeli m
­ ilitary
sometimes targeted residential buildings that it believed had been used for military
purposes. The military would issue warnings shortly before bombing the buildings,
often by calling the people who lived in the building and telling them that they had
five minutes to evacuate. (Sometimes people defied or ignored the warnings—even
going onto the roof to act as human shields. In at least some cases, the Israeli military
bombed the building anyway.) During the invasion, the military also scattered leaflets
over areas of heavy fighting, explaining to residents that the military did not wish to
harm them or their families and encouraging them to gather in specific areas of the city
until the fighting was over. Evaluate the Israeli military’s action of providing warnings
to civilians to encourage them to evacuate bombing targets and areas of heavy fighting.
10. Taliban militants captured U.S. Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl on or around June 30,
2009. The exact details of his capture remain murky, but various sources indicate that
Bergdahl walked off a small Army outpost in eastern Afghanistan and was captured
soon thereafter. Although the U.S. military poured enormous resources into searching
for Bergdahl, imposing serious hardships and grave risks on a great many American
soldiers and Afghan civilians, the Taliban managed to evade the Americans and carry
Bergdahl across the border into Pakistan. Nearly five years later, on May 31, 2014,
the Taliban turned Bergdahl over to the U.S. government in return for the release of
five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. After his release, Bergdahl claimed that he had
walked away from the outpost in an attempt to hike 20 miles to a larger base. He
thought that his stunt would grab high-ranking officers’ attention, which would enable
him to explain that he thought his commanders had displayed reckless disregard for
154    APPENDIX 2  •   ADDITIONAL CASE STUDIES

his unit’s safety. This, he thought, was the only way to protect his unit. Assuming that
Bergdahl is telling the truth about why he disappeared, evaluate his action of trying to
get his message across by walking away from his post into hostile territory.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

11. After stealing a stash of compact discs from a man’s barn in 2011, two teenage thieves
were shocked to find the discs contained large amounts of child pornography. The
thieves took the discs to the police, confessing that they had stolen them. The police ar-
rested the man from whom the discs were stolen and declined to press charges against
the thieves. Evaluate the burglars’ action of taking the discs to the police and confess-
ing that they had stolen them.
12. A customer at a Home Deport in Auburn Hills, Michigan, watched as a security guard
chased two men out of the store and into the parking lot. When the two men hopped into
an SUV and tried to escape, the customer pulled out her handgun (for which she had
a concealed carry permit) and starting shooting at the fleeing SUV. The two suspects
escaped the scene unharmed, though one bullet did hit one of their tires. Prosecutors
charged the customer, Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez, with reckless discharge of a firearm.
At her trial, Duva-Rodriguez claimed that she had feared that she was witnessing
something more serious than shoplifting and that she was “trying to help.” Evaluate
Duva-Rodriguez’s action of shooting at the fleeing SUV.
13. As their subway train rumbled between stations on July 4, 2015, 18-year-old Jasper
Spires tried to grab 24-year-old Kevin Sutherland’s cell phone. Sutherland resisted and
a fight broke out. Spires punched Sutherland until he fell to the floor, at which point
Spires pulled out a knife and stabbed Sutherland thirty to forty times, killing him. The
other passengers, terrified, huddled at either end of the car. No one tried to stop Spires,
who then robbed other passengers and fled the scene at the next station. Evaluate the
bystanders’ failure to intervene in the stabbing.
14. When Noela Rukundo showed up at her own funeral, her husband was less thrilled than
one might have expected. Just a few days earlier, the gangsters he’d hired to kill his wife
had told him that she was dead. In truth, they’d never gone through with it. They kidnapped
Rukundo in her native country of Burundi, held her hostage for two days, provided her
with indisputable evidence that her husband had hired them to kill her, and then released
her, saying that they refused to kill women. They kept the $7,000 that her husband had
paid them. Evaluate the gangsters’ action of taking Rukundo’s husband’s money, pretend-
ing to kill her, and then providing his wife with evidence of her husband’s crimes.

FILM AND FICTION

15. In the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, ambitious Lizet Ramirez kept her
college applications secret from her Cuban-American parents. Upon receiving a full
 Technology    155

scholarship to an elite liberal arts college in upstate New York, Lizet shocks and in-
furiates her family by announcing that she is leaving Miami to attend college, which
they regard as a selfish betrayal. Evaluate Lizet’s action of moving away from her
family to attend an elite college on a full scholarship.
16. In the film Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Pink (played by Steve Buscemi) argues that he
shouldn’t have to tip servers in restaurants, as long as those servers make minimum
wage. (Today, many servers in the United States officially make far less than mini-
mum wage on the assumption that tips will make up the difference.) He says that they
are simply doing their job, just like everybody else, and so there is no more reason to
tip servers than to tip anybody else. Evaluate Mr. Pink’s act of refusing to tip servers
at restaurants.
17. In the film Get Hard, Darnell (played by Kevin Hart) runs a struggling car detailing
business in a parking garage. With bad credit and no savings, Darnell is struggling to
move his family out of a dangerous neighborhood. When one of his customers comes
to him for help, Darnell sees an opportunity to make the money he needs to move to
a better neighborhood. The customer, multimillionaire investment manager James
King (played by Will Ferrell), has just been sentenced to ten years in a maximum
security prison for securities fraud and embezzlement. King incorrectly assumes that
Darnell has served time in prison because he is black. He begs Darnell to teach him
what he needs to know to survive behind bars. Without correcting King’s false as-
sumption that he’s been to prison, Darnell agrees to do so in return for $30,000.
Evaluate Darnell’s action of agreeing to teach King how to survive in prison despite
lacking any special knowledge of how to do so.
18. In the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was adapted into films in both
Sweden and the United States, teenage computer security expert Lisbeth Salander
helps journalist Mikael Blomkvist uncover evidence linking billionaire industrialist
and all-around terrible person Hans-Erik Wennerström to a range of international
criminal activities. Blomkvist uses the evidence, which Lisbeth stole by hacking into
Wennerström’s computer, to write an exposé that ruins Wennerström. Lisbeth then
hacks into Wennerström’s secret bank accounts and steals hundreds of millions of
dollars from him, which she keeps for herself. Evaluate Lisbeth’s action of stealing
Wennerström’s (mostly ill-gotten) fortune.

TECHNOLOGY

19. Technology company FaceFirst won’t tell you who its customers are. That’s because
many people find the company’s technology creepy, and so FaceFirst’s customers
would rather that you not know what they’re doing. FaceFirst’s facial recognition
software enables stores to identify shoppers using cameras set up at the front door or
around the store. Some stores use the software to compare shoppers to a database of
known shoplifters so that they can follow them around the store or even kick them
out. In that case, the goal is to keep prices down by reducing theft. Other stores use it
to identify loyal customers or big spenders so that they can offer them special service
156    APPENDIX 2  •   ADDITIONAL CASE STUDIES

or discounts. In that case, the goal is to provide a better experience to important cus-
tomers. Evaluate the retail stores’ action of using facial recognition technology to se-
cretly identify customers and target some for (positive or negative) special treatment.
20. Anthony Elonis began writing violent lyrics and posting them to Facebook after his
wife left him, taking their children with her. The lyrics included graphic, violent
threats against his wife, his coworkers, local schoolchildren, and even an FBI agent
who came to his home to investigate his behavior. But he also posted disclaimers
that he was merely expressing his frustration and exercising his First Amendment
right to free speech. Elonis continued his threatening lyrics even after his wife got a
restraining order against him. Evaluate Elonis’s action of posting threatening lyrics
to Facebook. (Set aside the legal question of whether his posts were actually illegal.
Focus instead on the moral evaluation of his actions.)
21. A pair of computer-security researchers publicly released a video and article through
WIRED magazine, proving that (as of July 2015) they could hack into some Jeep
Cherokees’ control systems over the Internet, enabling them to track the vehicle,
crank up the radio, control the windshield wipers, and even disable the brakes or
the engine. The researchers explained that they released their video publicly to draw
attention to the importance of cybersecurity in cars. They did not publicly release
details about how to do any of these things. They had been in touch with Jeep about
their work for months, and Jeep had already prepared a security update for the car’s
software, although drivers would need to contact Jeep or a Jeep dealer to install it.
Evaluate the researchers’ action of publicly releasing the video showing that Jeeps
were vulnerable to hacking.
22. As a wildfire raged through British Columbia in the summer of 2015, a small, privately
owned drone hovered near the fire for three hours. During that time, officials prohibited
firefighting planes and helicopters from entering the area because of the risk of a crash.
Similar incidents have hindered firefighting efforts throughout the American West. Not
only do these drones hinder firefighting efforts, allowing the fires to grow larger and
more destructive, they endanger firefighters’ lives as they increase the risk of aircraft
crashing directly into wildfires. Some of the drones presumably belong to curious and
clueless hobbyists who just want a closer look, while others probably belong to people
hoping to sell footage or pictures to local news outlets. Evaluate the drone operators’
action of flying unauthorized, private drones over active wildfires.
23. American dentist Walter Palmer likes to hunt. In July 2015, he traveled to Zimbabwe,
where, with the help of some local guides, he lured a lion out of a national park, shot
it with a bow and arrow, and tracked the wounded animal for 40 hours before he
finally killed it. The lion that Palmer killed turned out to be something of a celebrity:
the 13-year-old male lion, named Cecil, was a well-known and beloved attraction at
Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. News of Cecil’s death provoked international
outrage. When journalists revealed Palmer’s identity, some people found a way to
strike back. Thousands of people posted negative reviews on the Yelp listing for
Palmer’s dental practice in Minnesota, leaving him with a one-star rating and a
barrage of strongly worded comments. For instance, Yelp user “Joshua N.” wrote,
“Brought my lion here for dentistry and was horrified by the result. All kidding aside,
I hope you die painfully.” Evaluate the Yelp users’ action of posting such reviews for
Palmer’s dental practice.
 Animals and Nature    157

ANIMALS AND NATURE

24. New Yorkers used to know that the circus had come to town when the Ringling Bros.
and Barnum & Bailey circus paraded its elephants through the Queens-Midtown
Tunnel. As of 2016, however, circus-goers will no longer see elephants in Ringling
Bros.’ acts. The last performing elephants retired to the company’s 200-acre Center
for Elephant Conservation near Orlando, Florida, where they will live the rest of
their lives amid friends and family. Although circuses have long faced criticism from
animal rights groups about their treatment of the elephants, Ringling Bros. says that
they retired the elephants only as a result of increasingly burdensome regulations
about housing and transporting the elephants. Evaluate the company’s action of re-
tiring the elephants from the circus and moving them to their Center for Elephant
Conservation.
25. When a 4-year-old boy slipped through the fence and jumped into the gorilla exhibit
at the Cincinnati Zoo, a 450-pound silverback gorilla named Harambe ambled over
and grabbed him. At one point Harambe dragged the boy across his enclosure, but at
other times he stood over the boy in what some zoo visitors described as a protective
manner. The zoo tried to coax the powerful gorilla out of his exhibit, but Harambe
stayed put. They considered knocking Harambe out with a tranquilizer dart, but
they feared that the gorilla might hurt or kill the boy in the ten minutes or so that
it would take for the tranquilizer to take effect. So, in the end, the zoo’s Dangerous
Animal Response Team shot Harambe dead. Harambe had been one of about
175,000 ­Western lowland gorillas left in the world. The boy escaped with serious but
non–life-threatening injuries. Evaluate the zoo’s action of shooting and killing Harambe.
26. The Oregon National Primate Research Center houses thousands of monkeys that are
used for biomedical research. The Center’s Reproductive & Developmental Sciences
division uses the monkeys to study serious problems that arise in human pregnancies,
such as premature birth and stillbirth, with the goal of preventing and treating those
problems. To do this, researchers often perform experiments that they expect will
cause stillbirths, premature labor, and so on. In other cases, the researchers investigate
the effects of potential treatments by performing cesarean sections (“C-sections”) on
pregnant monkeys and then killing the fetuses or baby monkeys to study their brains,
lungs, and other tissues. All of these procedures are designed and performed in accor-
dance with the Center’s guidelines for the care and use of research animals. Evaluate
the Center’s action of disrupting monkey pregnancies and killing monkey fetuses or
babies in order to study serious problems that arise in human pregnancies.
27. There are only about 5,000 black rhinos left in the world. On Monday, May 18,
2016, one of them died, shot by an American hunter named Corey Knowlton in the
southern African country of Namibia. But even though the black rhino is critically
endangered, Knowlton hadn’t broken any laws. In fact, he had shot the rhino with
the approval of Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism. The Ministry had
identified the specific rhino that Knowlton killed as eligible for hunting; the rhino
was an older male who was no longer reproducing but posed a threat to younger
males. The Ministry auctioned off a permit to hunt the rhino, which Knowlton bought
for $350,000. That money will go toward anti-poaching and conservation efforts to
158    APPENDIX 2  •   ADDITIONAL CASE STUDIES

protect the black rhino species. Knowlton argues that by buying the permit and killing
a dangerous, non-reproducing rhino, he was actually increasing the species’ chance
of survival. Evaluate Knowlton’s action of buying the permit and hunting the rhino.
28. Some 5 billion passenger pigeons called North America home at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, making it one of the most abundant birds on the planet. By 1914,
however, hunting had driven the birds to extinction. That’s when the last known pas-
senger pigeon, known as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was preserved for
future display, and now scientists are exploring ways to use DNA from her preserved
remains to revive the species. Scientists believe they could create new passenger
pigeons by cloning Martha’s cells and using closely related species, such as rock pi-
geons, as surrogate parents. (Not all species are candidates for such “de-extinction.”
Passenger pigeons and woolly mammoths have been proposed as likely candidates;
dinosaurs have not.) Evaluate the (proposed) action of using biomedical technology
to revive species that humans drove to extinction.

MEDICINE AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

29. Citing philosophical reasons and sincere but misguided concerns about safety, some
parents refuse to give their children the vaccines recommended by pediatricians and
public health experts. Some of these parents base their refusal on misinformation that
circulates widely online, such as a thoroughly discredited study published in 1999
that supposedly linked vaccines to autism. While refusing to vaccinate their children
does protect their children from the very small risk of adverse side effects, it leaves
their children vulnerable to childhood diseases that had been all but wiped out in
the United States, including potentially fatal diseases such as pertussis (whooping
cough) and measles. Furthermore, by making it possible for their children to pass
the illnesses on to others—including babies who are too young to be vaccinated and
people who can’t be vaccinated because of other health issues—these parents are
increasing others’ risk of catching these diseases. Evaluate these parents’ action of
refusing to vaccinate their children. (Set aside people who refuse because of explic-
itly religious reasons.)
30. Rinat Dray went into labor with her third child in July 2011. Her first two children
had been delivered by cesarean section, but Dray wanted to deliver the third naturally.
Doctors, however, worried that her uterus would rupture during labor, endangering
her baby. They tried to persuade her to have a C-section, but she refused. After a few
hours of labor, the hospital’s medical and legal staff overruled her refusal; the doctors
wheeled her off to an operating room and delivered her baby boy by C-section. Eval-
uate the hospital’s action of delivering Dray’s baby by C-section against her wishes.
31. When they learned they were going blind, 45-year-old twins Marc and Eddy Verbessem
were horrified. They were already deaf, and they communicated with each other using
a special sign language that no one outside their immediate family could understand.
Without their sight, they would lose their ability to communicate, and they would lose
their independence. They would be confined to an institution for the severely disabled.
 Medicine and Biotechnology    159

They decided that, given their special circumstances, going blind meant having nothing
left to live for. Marc and Eddy lived in Belgium, where terminally ill patients can
request euthanasia. Despite their aged parents’ objections, Marc and Eddy eventually
convinced several doctors to approve their request. The two died by lethal injection,
with their parents and brother by their side, in December 2012. Evaluate Marc and
Eddy’s decision to carry out physician-assisted suicide to avoid becoming blind.
32. With a recently invented technique called CRISPR, scientists can now edit a cell’s
DNA with greater precision than ever before. Any changes made to a “germline” cell,
such as an embryo or an egg cell, would not only affect any organism that develops
from that cell, but could be passed on to that organism’s descendants. In theory,
therefore, it could be used to eliminate dangerous genetic diseases. But according to
critics, it could also be used for more controversial purposes, such as creating geneti-
cally enhanced “designer babies.” In 2015, Chinese scientists led by Huang Junjiu
published the results of their attempt to use CRISPR to edit human embryos. All of
the embryos, which Huang obtained from a local fertility clinic, were “non-viable,”
meaning that they could never have been used to produce a live birth. Huang’s team
attempted to edit the gene responsible for a fatal blood disease, and their research re-
vealed serious difficulties in using CRISPR for medical purposes. Evaluate Huang’s
action of testing medical uses of CRISPR on non-viable human embryos.
 PART V

Readings
 Tips on Reading Philosophy

This section contains papers and excerpts from books written by historical and contemporary philosophers. Read-
ing these papers and excerpts requires a somewhat different approach than reading most other things. For one
thing, philosophers aren’t usually telling a story, as novelists do, or providing you with a bunch of information to
memorize, as many textbooks do. Instead, they are almost always giving arguments. Often these arguments aim to
establish very controversial conclusions with careful and complex reasoning. With that in mind, here are six tips
for reading philosophy well:
1. Read slowly. Reading philosophy takes a lot longer than reading most other things. It’s often difficult
to really understand a particular passage (or an entire paper) until you’ve read it several times. Don’t be
discouraged—it’s like that for everyone.
2. Don’t multitask. When you multitask while reading, your brain has to switch back and forth between
what you’re reading and whatever else you’re doing. If you’re just trying to absorb a bunch of informa-
tion, that might not be so bad. But when you’re trying to follow a long chain of reasoning, switching
back and forth makes it much harder for your brain to keep track of the argument by connecting what
you’re reading now to what you read before. So, no matter how good you are at multitasking, reading
philosophy will be much easier if you put everything else away for a while.
3. Look for the main conclusion. Most philosophical papers will tell you the author’s main conclusion early
on. (The excerpts from books are usually less clear about this, since the “main point” of an entire book
is difficult to state succinctly.) When you figure out what the main conclusion is, make a note of it. You
might even want to underline it or put a star in the margin. It will be much easier to follow the rest of the
argument if you know what the conclusion is.
4. Keep track of the arguments as you read them. If you’re reading a history textbook, you’re probably
learning information about what happened in the past, why those things happened, and so on. When
you’re reading philosophy, you’re learning arguments. Those are the most important things that you
should try to get out of each paper or excerpt. Use the tools introduced in Parts I and II of this book to
reconstruct and keep track of those arguments.
5. Be ready for the author to disagree with himself or herself. Philosophers almost always raise objections to
their own conclusions or arguments. Don’t be surprised when a philosopher suddenly starts arguing against
the position he or she was just arguing for. The author doesn’t really think the objection works; he or she is
usually just bringing it up in order to show why it fails or to introduce a slightly more nuanced version of the
conclusion. (See pp. 82–85 for a discussion of objections and the various ways that philosophers typically
respond to them.)
6. Be prepared for authors to disagree with one another. In many classes, your instructors assign readings mainly
to convey information that they expect you to learn. That is, your instructors think that the claims in the

162
 Tips on Reading Philosophy    163

reading are true and they want you to believe those claims. That is not the case in a philosophy class. Your
instructors assign readings because they want you to understand and consider the arguments presented in the
reading, not (necessarily) because they want you to accept the conclusions of those arguments. So don’t be
surprised if you read a paper one week that argues for the exact opposite conclusion from the one in the paper
you read last week. The point is to study the arguments in both papers so that you can come to a well-reasoned
judgment about which paper’s conclusion is correct.
To help you with these tasks, Part V includes a short description and a few guiding questions before each reading as
well as discussion questions after each reading. The description will give you a very brief idea about the main point
of the reading. The guiding questions will direct your attention to key claims, arguments, and objections. Keeping
these questions in mind as you read will help you navigate the reading. Thinking through the discussion questions
afterward can help improve and deepen your understanding of the reading’s arguments.
 Moral Theory

IMMANUEL KANT (1724–1804)

TRANSLATED BY JAMES W. ELLINGTON

Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals

In these excerpts from the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, philosophical giant
Immanuel Kant searches for the fundamental rule of morality, which he calls the “categorical
imperative.” He argues that there is exactly one categorical imperative, which can be under-
stood in three different ways.

GUIDING QUESTIONS
1.  Kant begins by discussing the importance of a “good will” but spends the rest of the excerpt talk-
ing about “duty” (i.e., obligation). What is the connection, according to Kant, between the idea of a
good will and the idea of duty?
2.  What is the difference between a hypothetical imperative and a categorical imperative? What is the
connection between a categorical imperative and a moral law?
3.  What is the categorical imperative? That is, what does the categorical imperative tell you to do?
(Kant gives more than one answer to this question. Look for at least three!)
4.  Why does Kant discuss the examples of suicide, promise-keeping, developing one’s talents, and
helping others? That is, what purpose do those examples serve in the reading as a whole?
5.  What does Kant mean when he says that something is “an end in itself ” rather than a mere “thing”?
6.  What is the “kingdom of ends” and what does it have to do with the categorical imperative?

FIRST SECTION temperament as courage, resolution, and perseverance.

But they can also become extremely bad and harmful
if the will, which is to make use of these gifts of nature
There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all and which in its special constitution is called charac-
in the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded ter, is not good. The same holds with gifts of fortune;
as good without qualification, except a good will. In- power, riches, honor, even health, and that complete
telligence, wit, judgment, and whatever talents of the well-being and contentment with one’s condition
mind one might want to name are doubtless in many which is called happiness make for pride and often
respects good and desirable, as are such qualities of hereby even arrogance, unless there is a good will to
Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Reprinted with permission of Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

164

correct their influence on the mind and herewith also
to rectify the whole principle of action and make it uni-
versally conformable to its end. The sight of a being
who is not graced by any touch of a pure and good
will but who yet enjoys an uninterrupted prosperity can
never delight a rational and impartial spectator. Thus a
good will seems to constitute the indispensable condi-
tion of being even worthy of happiness. . . .
A good will is good not because of what it effects
or accomplishes, nor because of its fitness to attain
some proposed end; it is good only through its will-
ing, i.e., it is good in itself. When it is considered in
itself, then it is to be esteemed very much higher than
anything which it might ever bring about merely in
order to favor some inclination, or even the sum total
of all inclinations. Even if, by some especially un-
fortunate fate or by the niggardly provision of step-
motherly nature, this will should be wholly lacking in
the power to accomplish its purpose; if with the great-
est effort it should yet achieve nothing, and only the
good will should remain (not, to be sure, as a mere
wish but as the summoning of all the means in our
power), yet would it, like a jewel, still shine by its own
light as something which has its full value in itself. . . .
The concept of a will estimable in itself and good
without regard to any further end must now be devel-
oped. . . .Therefore, we shall take up the concept of
duty, which includes that of a good will. . . .
I here omit all actions already recognized as con-
trary to duty, even though they may be useful for this or
that end; for in the case of these the question does not
arise at all as to whether they might be done from duty,
since they even conflict with duty. I also set aside those
actions which are really in accordance with duty, yet to
which men have no immediate inclination, but perform
them because they are impelled thereto by some other
inclination. For in this [second] case to decide whether
the action which is in accord with duty has been done
from duty or from some selfish purpose is easy. The
difference is far more difficult to note in the [third] case
where the action accords with duty and the subject has
in addition an immediate inclination to do the action.
For example, that a dealer should not overcharge an
inexperienced purchaser certainly accords with duty;
and where there is much commerce, the prudent mer-
chant does not overcharge but keeps to a fixed price
for everyone in general, so that a child may buy from
him just as well as everyone else may. Thus customers
K ant   •   Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals      165
are honestly served, but this is not nearly enough for
making us believe that the merchant has acted this way
from duty and from principles of honesty; his own ad-
vantage required him to do it. He cannot, however, be
assumed to have in addition [as in the third case] an
immediate inclination toward his buyers, causing him,
as it were, out of love to give no one as far as price
is concerned any advantage other another. Hence the
action was done neither from duty nor from immediate
inclination, but merely for a selfish purpose.
On the other hand, to preserve one’s life is a duty;
and, furthermore, everyone has also an immediate in-
clination to do so. But on this account the often anxious
care taken by most men for it has no intrinsic worth,
and the maxim of their action has no moral content.
They preserve their lives, to be sure, in accordance with
duty, but not from duty. On the other hand, if adversity
and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away the
taste for life, if an unfortunate man, strong in soul and
more indignant at his fate than despondent or dejected,
wishes for death and yet preserves his life without
loving it—not from inclination or fear, but from duty—
then his maxim indeed has moral content. . . .
SECOND SECTION
Everything in nature works according to laws. Only
a rational being has the power to act according to
his conception of laws, i.e., according to principles,
and thereby has he a will. Since the derivation of ac-
tions from laws requires reason, the will is nothing
but practical reason. . . .
All imperatives are expressed by an ought and
thereby indicate the relation of an objective law of
reason to a will that is not necessarily determined
by this law because of its subjective constitution (the
relation of necessitation). Imperatives say that some-
thing would be good to do or to refrain from doing,
but they say it to a will that does not always therefore
do something simply because it has been represented
to the will as something good to do. That is practically
good which determines the will by means of represen-
tations of reason and hence not by subjective causes,
but objectively, i.e., on grounds valid for every ratio-
nal being as such. It is distinguished from the pleasant
as that which influences the will only by means of