Great Contemporary Essays in Ethics

The Crooked Timber has a post this week requesting recommendations for superlative essays in applied ethics that are also accessible to non-philosophers. I've had the privilege of reading many (though definitely not all) listed there, and if you're interested in reading what philosophers think about many practical moral issues, I suggest taking a look, here.

For my part, I can recommend the following. I'm not posting links to the articles, because very few are open access. However, if you have access to a library, you probably have access to JSTOR, and if you have access to JSTOR, you have access to all of these articles.

• Utilitarianism
  — "A Critique of Utilitarianism" by Bernard Williams
  
  
• Moral Relativism
  — "Moral Relativism Defended" by Gilbert Harman
  
  
• Euthanasia
  — "Against the Right to Die" by David Velleman
  — "Death" by Thomas Nagel
  
  
• Abortion
  — "A Defense of Abortion" by Judith Thomson
  — "A Kantian Argument Against Abortion" by Harry Gensler
  
  
• War
  — "War and Massacre" by Thomas Nagel
  — "The Problem of Dirty Hands" by Michael Walzer
  
  
• Super Interesting (and oddly convincing...)
  
  — "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant" by Nick Bostrom
  

The great thing about applied ethics is that so many of its philosophers are truly excellent writers--an aspect sorely lacking in much philosophical writing.