The book is comprised of three parts: (1) Theories, (2) Skills, and (3) Applications. In Part One, after providing a brief preliminary explanation of morality, some traditional ethical theories are discussed in terms of the distinction between individual and social morality. The basic moral ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and John Rawls are distilled, paraphrased, and discussed. The discussion of moral theory is not comprehensive., For
example, since morality is treated as a rational, human construction, religious morality is not addressed directly. The question of whether or not religion ought properly to belong to the moral realm in the first place introduces a highly complex, metaethical problem that falls outside the restricted concerns of this introductory text.