Mackie - Elements of a Practical Morality

Introduction and Review

This resource is derived from Mackie, Ethics - Inventing Right and Wrong (Penguin, 1977), Ch. 8, Elements of a Practical Morality. I enjoyed this book greatly and it made me more atuned to the world. This chapter summarises Mackie's analysis and raises questions (hopefully) relevant to ethical business practice. His elements of a practical morality cover

  1. The "good" for man
  2. Egoism, rights and property
  3. Liberty
  4. Truth-telling, lies and agreements
  5. How Princes should keep the faith
  6. Virtue
  7. The motive for morality
  8. Extensions of morality
  9. The right to life

The original work is Mackie's labour of love supported by Penguin's investment as a publisher. This is a poor, suspect substitute. Buy the paperback - £ 7.99 UK - and contribute to the good life of authors and publishers! My students get this annotated, HTML reflection of the chapter and are urged to taste the original's full flavour.

This practical, explanatory schema covers ingredients and processes of moral choice/behaviour taking a broad, rule-right-duty-disposition-egoism utilitarian view. Healthy, human life is valued as he debates concrete moral issues without appeal to absolute obligations or mythology-cum-transcendentalism or unitary, communitarian happinesses. He tries to expose the implausible.

Mackie's actual phrases are defined by quotation marks.

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This resource was prepared by Chris Jarvis for the BOLA project.