For reasons both good and not so good, the philosophy introduction is a guaranteed money-spinner. The market is awash with Companions, Handbooks, Guidebooks, Anthologies, and Readings. Now we have the Compendium. Its arrival — whether one is inclined to applaud, or sniff at, such things — once again highlights the introduction's capacity for endless recycling. As it turns out, Baggini and Fosl have provided an admirably no-nonsense tour through the crowded landscape of contemporary philosophical ethics. Competent and helpful; this little gem will keep the pair in ale for many a year to come.

The book is structured precisely as one would expect a compendium to be structured. It consists of numbered bite-sized abstracts, two to three pages in length, which are followed by a "See Also" section for cross-referencing, and a list of three readings. The abstracts are grouped into five chapters, with each chapter containing roughly twenty entries. The abstracts are alphabetically ordered.

The chapters are entitled: "The Grounds of Ethics", "Frameworks for Ethics", "Central Concepts in Ethics", "Assessment, Judgment, and Critique", and "The Limits of Ethics". So, in the first chapter we find entries such as "Agency" (which is section 1.2) and "Sympathy" (§ 1.20); in chapter two, we are subjected to a barrage of '–isms', from "Consequentialism" (§ 2.1) to "Subjectivism" (§ 2.15); and in chapter three, various binary oppositions — for example, "Absolute/relative" (§ 3.1), "Public/private" (§ 3.23) — are outlined. Such is the pattern throughout.

The entries are written in the style of the reference book: uncontroversial, balanced, and on the mark. As a whole, then, they fulfil their brief more than adequately. This happy state of affairs threatens to bring the present discussion to a premature halt. Thankfully, Baggini and Fosl have other ideas! In their introduction — when they speak in their own collective voice — they make some weird remarks that demand interrogation.

In order to respond to the "many voices composing the moral discourses of our age", write Baggini and Fosl, "many tools are necessary … not a single voice or a single tool" (Introduction, xv — xvii). They continue by outlining the figure of the "competent" moral philosopher, who requires a "well-stocked 'toolkit' containing a host of intellectual instruments for careful, precise, and sophisticated moral thinking". "The Ethics Toolkit", the authors conclude, "aspires to help those engaged in moral inquiry" to become competent moral thinkers by providing the necessary ethical tools.

It is evident that Baggini's and Fosl's "vision of ethics" is "pluralistic". It is also pragmatic, as the constant references to "tools" makes abundantly clear. But there are difficulties with the authors' ethical vision. Firstly, their versions of pluralism and pragmatism, in light of the accounts they give of the two traditions in the main part of the book, turn out not to be pluralistic or pragmatic at all. Secondly, and in part emerging from the first point, their idea of ethical competence is shallow to say the least.

As outlined by Baggini and Fosl, pluralism (§ 5.10) is the doctrine most closely associated with Isaiah Berlin. It may be summarised as follows. There are a plurality of ultimate values, some of which are both incompatible and incommensurable, irresolvable conflicts occur between these values; and when they do occur, sacrifices are necessary, and tragic choices are made. The genuine pluralist, then, is not concerned with acquiring a toolkit that consists of a plurality of moral discourses. The pluralist is primarily concerned with identifying which values are irreconcilable and how best to deal with it. Baggini's and Fosl's pluralism is not pluralism in Berlin's sense, but is simply a statement of the fact that there are a hell of a lot of theories out there about how one should live.

The moral pragmatist, the authors claim, holds that "theorizing about ethics cannot be divorced from actual practices, conditions, and problems"; since, for the pragmatist, "morality is something dynamic and inextricably bound up with actual, concrete social practices" (§ 2.12). Pragmatism, then, involves the denial of the claim that it is possible to reflect on morality in a detached and disembodied way; or as Spinoza would have it, under the view of eternity — sub specie aeternitatis.

The problem for Baggini and Fosl is that their pragmatism looks suspiciously Spinozistic. On their view, the competent moral thinker responds to the variety of moral discourses by delving into the ethical toolkit, in order to grasp the appropriate intellectual instrument for the appropriate occasion. This clinical approach, however, would appear to presuppose a desire to attain to the condition of standing above, and being divorced from, the array of moral discourses. Baggini and Fosl, in other words, strive to extricate themselves from dirty concrete practices so that they may get to work with their clean and shiny tools. This is not in the spirit of pragmatism.

The foregoing considerations lead us to our final remarks. Baggini and Fosl have attempted to construct an ideal moral thinker that is somehow the red-blooded incarnation of the ethos of their compendium. Perhaps such creatures actually exist. But for the rest of us mere mortals, serious reflection on ethical matters is not about the efficient deployment of appropriate concepts. Much of it is an attempt to develop an image of the bedrock of recalcitrant affects that underlies the dispositions of character in order to put oneself in a position to evaluate the dispositions of character. Needless to say, it's dirty work.

© 2008 Ruben Berrios

Ruben Berrios is a philosopher whose research interests are in ethics and aesthetics. He has taught philosophy at University College Dublin, the University of Ulster, and Queen's University Belfast.