system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What books to read to get deep into ethics?

Hey I have only recently gotten into philosophy, I started off by reading The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, and now I want to learn more about ethics in general.

More specifically, I'm curious in how you ground out a moral statement into something that you can defend against someone who attacks it. Like for example if I say "Causing unnecessary pain and suffering is undesirable", and someone disagrees with you, how do you argue against them? I'm looking for something more or less along these lines of like starting points for moral conversations.
gpt
I would look at the Platonic texts "Meno" and "Euthyphro" as a good starting point. They are both dialogues so they demonstrate how to have a debate about ethics. From there look at Aristotle's "Nichomachean Ethics", Mills "Utilitarianism", Kants "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals" and Nietzsche's "Geneology of morals". These will give you a good groundwork for the major ethical theories.