Book Review

TITLE OF BOOK: Introduction to Ethics

AUTHOR: Reginald M.J. Oduor

This book is a product of more than a decade of Oduor’s experience in teaching ethics 

(moral philosophy) at the University of Nairobi. In the course of this introduction, the 

reader gets to see the techniques of philosophic reflection in action, as they are 

employed to scrutinise various pertinent moral questions.

Chapter 1 sets forth the main components of Oduor’s approach. He presents morality 

as a tool for the promotion of social harmony. In this regard, he points out that since 

actions emanating from any individual or social institution affects other individuals 

and social institutions, there is need to regulate such action. In the author’s view, 

moral philosophy proceeds from five assumptions about the human person, namely, 

that he/she is self-conscious (aware of his/her uniqueness), social (at his/her best 

when he/she interacts with fellow human beings), rational (able to provide grounds 

for his/her claims), creative (capable of coming up with new ways of performing old 

tasks), and moral (able to distinguish right action from wrong action, and virtuous

[11:40, 10/07/2021] Jozef: character from vicious character). The author then introduces his readers to the four 

main approaches to the study of morality, namely, descriptive ethics (which is the 

province of the social sciences), normative ethics, meta-ethics and applied ethics.