IT IS not only in our dark hours that scepticism, relativism, hypocrisy and nihilism worry away at ethics.

Whether it is a matter of giving to charity, sticking to duty or insisting on our rights, we can be confused or paralysed by the fear that our principles are groundless.

Many are afraid that, in a godless world, science has unmasked us as creatures fated by our genes to be selfish and tribalistic, or competitive and aggressive.

Simon Blackburn, professor of philosophy at Cambridge University, structures this short introduction around these and other threats to ethics.

Confronting seven different objections to our self-image as moral, well-behaved creatures, he charts a course through the philosophical quicksands that often engulf us.

Then, turning to problems of life and death, he shows how we think about the meaning of life and how we should mistrust the sound bite-sized absolutes that often dominate moral debates.

Updated: 08:49 Wednesday, May 22, 2002