Are we entitled to be confident that our moral judgements can be objective? Can they express insights into aspects of reality, rather than mere feelings, tastes, desires, decisions, upbringing, or conventions? Why must we consider some of our moral judgements be based om assessments of expected consequences? Can utilitarianism, and other consequentialist or proportionalist theories, be anything more than the rationalization of positions on other grounds? The main theme of this book is the challenge to ethics from philosophical scepticism and from contemporary forms of the consequentialism. But in seeking to meet this challenge, the book develops a sustained philosophical argument about many of the central questions of ethics. It reviews classical positions, and challenge some long influential interpretations of those positions. It also review and participates in some recent developments and controversies in Anglo American ethical theory.