The most recommended books on morality

No book was more fundamental in shaping and revolutionizing our understanding of the mores and values of the Antebellum South than Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s Southern Honor. Using legal documents, letters, diaries, and newspaper columns, this book reveals how the South’s honor system shaped and influenced how southerners lived, worked, and fought with one another. “Primal Honor” also influenced the way that Southerners made, enforced, or did not enforce the law.  Southern men adopted an ancient honor code that shaped their society from top to bottom. By claiming honor and dreading shame, they controlled their slaves, ruled their households, established the social rankings of themselves, kinfolk, and neighbors, and responded ferociously against perceived threats. Honor required men to demonstrate their prowess and engage in fierce defense of the individual, family, community, and regional reputation by duel, physical encounter, or war. Subordination of African-Americans was uppermost in this Southern ethic. Any threat, whether… show more.

Paul Bloom wants to persuade the reader to be against empathy, as he is, because morally we’re better off without empathy.

He is right, and I see his argument as similar to the argument made by Sugden, although its structure is very different. Bloome, rightly, says that we cannot rely on empathy to be moral – we need something more and something more tangible.

That something might be rationality, although Bloome himself prefers to speak of reason. Moral theories have for too long relied on unstable ground: empathy and moral character.

If we care about morality, we must ground it on more solid ground.

Many works of fiction explore the core human motivations and how they guide human behavior, but perhaps none more thoroughly and incisively than this collection of Hawthorne short stories. Hawthorne’s stories undoubtedly inspired The Twilight Zone and countless other works of fantasy and science fiction that convey messages about how human desires and cultural worldviews lead people toward thwarted goals and tragic outcomes. As such, they nicely complement the analyses conveyed by the other four books I have recommended. His stories explore guilt, anxiety, and ambition, as desires for security and growth conflict with the values of prevailing worldviews and often lead to misguided or fruitless efforts of people trying to make a lasting mark on the world.

This is the most influential book on my own thinking about meaningfulness in life. Wolf's idea that a meaningful life is distinct from both a happy life and a moral one—although there can be overlapping with these—is both simple and profound. And, unlike many contemporary philosophers, her writing is clear and accessible.

As a moderate leftist I was attracted by this propagandist of rightist policies. 

Ayn Rand makes a strong case to keep out the state and leave the economy to free markets. It helped me to sharpen my mind. 

What is missing in her analysis? How does that modify a rightist political outlook? She challenged me and thus influenced my own writing.

In this book, Dancy defends the thesis that he calls Ethical Particularism, according to which there is no or virtually no important role for moral rules or principles to play either in moral explanation or in moral understanding. But more importantly, in my view, along the way he lays out in clear and persuasive terms what a powerful explanatory role reasons play in ethical theory. I include it third on my list because the idea that reasons are fundamental and explanatory of everything that has to do with morality and other forms of evaluation has come to be very important in contemporary philosophy, but I think before my own book, this is the work that has articulated this thought the most powerfully and explicitly.

A grimdark fantasy in the tone of Abercrombie, Moss’s The Worthy is a brilliant debut that explores a fractious sibling relationship between brother and sister Prince Barsten and Princess Ailith, both of whom are battling to become heir to the kingdom of Crell. Ailith herself is hiding her lover, Lady Avalon, at the same time as trying to protect the kingdom when it quite literally begins to tear itself apart due to a mysterious magical entity. The book explores issues of patriarchal oppression, historic abuse and trauma, sexuality and homophobia. Despite the grim world and morally grey characters, I found myself drawn into this story because of the important themes it considered. 

This book shares a most harrowing and detailed story of a young slave girl, who had been bought by a much older master. The ordeals she went through and her struggles with her status created in me a lot of empathy. However, questions of justice versus mercy are raised in such a way that I was left speechless by the time I was done reading.

Guri and Gura’s books shine with the energy of childlike wonder and vitality. Children would delight in Guri and Gura’s adventures. For the parents these books present an opportunity to tap into a possibly dormant, yet present sense of wonderment, magic, and the joy of eating, running, nature, friendship and discovery.

Passion is a highly intense and passionate novel that transports you away from the traditional HR to a whole new world of an exotic and steamy love affair. The characters flourish together from hot-blooded lovers to hopelessly in love. This book carries all that you would hope to find in a historical romance, from lust, obsession, longing, and love with a happy conclusion. If you’re looking for all the qualities, and then some, in a historical romance, then this book will get you there! Truly unforgettable! I read this over a decade ago, and I still remember it fondly! But honestly, because of all the sensual sex scenes!