Nice list! On Utilitarianism books I would just point out Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction—jointly written by Katarzyna de Lazari Radek and Peter Singer. It’s brilliant and accessible, and even has a section on EA. I would love to see this book find its way into the hands of more people who may respond well to its content.
(One thing worth noting is that Sidgwick’s ‘The Method of Ethics’ is very long and dense. I think it’s more philosophy than most people will be interested in reading in their entire lives, and for this reason I don’t generally recommend it to EAs, similar to why I don’t generally recommend that people read Reasons and Persons in full.)
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.
Nice list! On Utilitarianism books I would just point out Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction—jointly written by Katarzyna de Lazari Radek and Peter Singer. It’s brilliant and accessible, and even has a section on EA. I would love to see this book find its way into the hands of more people who may respond well to its content.
Also, you mention Mill’s book may be the best defence and explanation of utilitarianism. I don’t have a view myself not having read it, but I know Singer far prefers Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics and wrote The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics as a discussion and extension of Sidgwick’s ideas.
(One thing worth noting is that Sidgwick’s ‘The Method of Ethics’ is very long and dense. I think it’s more philosophy than most people will be interested in reading in their entire lives, and for this reason I don’t generally recommend it to EAs, similar to why I don’t generally recommend that people read Reasons and Persons in full.)
Thanks, I suspected as much. Peter Singer’s Sidgwick book is probably a much better recommendation to make!
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.