Like Max mentioned, I’m not sure The Methods of Ethics is a good introduction to utilitarianism; I expect most people would find it difficult to read. But thanks for the pointer to the Very Short Introduction, I’ll check it out!
Also just copying from my kindle version of the very short introduction book:
General Recent introductory works on utilitarianism include:
Krister Bykvist, Utilitarianism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2010
Tim Mulgan, Understanding Utilitarianism, Routledge, London, 2014.
Those who want to go more deeply into the topic may wish to read:
Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, The Point of View of the Universe, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014
Torbjörn Tännsjö, Hedonistic Utilitarianism, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1998.
For specific topics discussed in this book, we also recommend looking up the topic in the free online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: <https://plato.stanford.edu>
That’s fair enough. I haven’t read the Singer book based on Sidgwick, but I suspect it would be far more accessible and a good book for someone to read if they are already familiar with the key ideas of utilitarianism.
Like Max mentioned, I’m not sure The Methods of Ethics is a good introduction to utilitarianism; I expect most people would find it difficult to read. But thanks for the pointer to the Very Short Introduction, I’ll check it out!
Also just copying from my kindle version of the very short introduction book:
That’s fair enough. I haven’t read the Singer book based on Sidgwick, but I suspect it would be far more accessible and a good book for someone to read if they are already familiar with the key ideas of utilitarianism.
Interestingly the books I mentioned aren’t in the utilitarianism.net list of books. Not sure why.