As the Introduction explains, this book concerns the foundations of ethics; it examines issues of metaethics, moral epistemology, moral psychology, value theory, and moral theory. I defend a number of positions on these issues; in particular, I argue that a realist metaethics, a coherentist moral epistemology, an externalist moral psychology, a nonreductive form of ethical naturalism, an objective theory of value, and an objective form of utilitarianism are individually plausible and mutually supporting. In the course of examining these issues and defending these claims, I discuss and assess both traditional and contemporary views. I have usually tried to introduce, explain, and motivate the issues and the positions that have been taken on them. To this extent, the book should be accessible to a fairly wide audience with varied interests and backgrounds. But it is not strictly introductory; nor is it in any way a survey of established terrain. I have generally assumed a certain threshold familiarity with traditional positions and disputes about the foundations of ethics and with traditional and contemporary issues in metaphysics and epistemology. Against this background, I argue for my own particular set of views about the foundations of ethics. So even if the book is accessible to a fairly wide audience, it speaks most directly to a somewhat narrower audience of more advanced students and specialists.

This book grew out of the doctoral dissertation I submitted to Cornell University in 1984; though recognizably related to the dissertation, the book is in many ways quite different.