Editors’ Introduction

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The edited volume The Structure of Normative Ethics &amp; Other Essays in Moral Philosophy contains a selection of essays in normative ethics by Shelly Kagan published between 1988 and 2018. This introduction provides an overview of the volume. The essays contained in this volume have been grouped thematically into three sections. The volume opens with a cluster of essays that concern the structure of normative ethics. A general theme of these essays is that, by carving ethics at the joints, we can glean a better idea of what the main moral theories are up to, whether they are offering up competing hypotheses, or whether they are answering different questions that arise at different levels. The second group of essays explores the various methods of normative ethics, critically examining the role of thought experiments and the practical difficulty of following moral principles given various epistemic limitations. The final section brings together essays on practical ethics. Strictly speaking, the essays in this section are not themselves essays in practical or applied ethics. Instead, these essays are more accurately described as theoretical papers that address various conceptual issues which, in turn, have important implications for practical disciplines such as environmental ethics and animal ethics.</jats:p>