Ethics is concerned with the evaluation of our actions and their motivations as they regard others (and perhaps ourselves) for good or for ill. We ask how we ought best to act. What effects on others and us are good or bad? What actions are right or wrong? What are the considerations by means of which we may decide? Many ethical discussions focus on questions of what moral rules we ought to follow, how we are to validate them, and how we ought to apply them in particular sorts of difficult situations. In this chapter I begin by discussing what, in recent times, have been the two most influential approaches to ethics. One approach has been primarily concerned with getting good results; the other has been primarily concerned with the rightness and wrongness of actions, and with our inviolable moral status as persons. Both of those approaches, in their many manifestations, have their flaws. Some, though not all, of these flaws have been significantly compounded by incorrect and inadequate conceptions of ourselves and our good – and, more generally, compounded by other dubious elements in our intellectual heritage. It is generally taken for granted that what we are and what is good for us is sufficiently well understood, and that the important issues concern what we ought to do about it. Ethical discussion on such a basis can still be very fruitful and valuable. Nevertheless, as I argue in subsequent text, traditional styles of ethics must be augmented, and transformed, by more adequate conceptions of ourselves and our interests. With more adequate conceptions we might hope to retain and reconcile the better features of each approach. Subsequently I attempt to do that. I also hope to offer some justice to some of the less influential approaches to ethics. I then try to show how better conceptions, particularly better conceptions of self and our good, together with a better understanding of the nature of ethics and moral action, can help us to cope with difficulties and complexities of bioethics.