Basically it's a choose your own adventure book that figures out a representative opinion of the theories of prominent philosophers, on all sorts of issues.
On a related note, how does a person go about formally approaching their own personal philosophy, or moral code? I know how to consider these things in the abstract, but it's hard to find, for lack of a better word, application.
Edit* One of my favorite passages from the end of the exercise
Do people always do what they think is best? On the face of it, the answer should be 'yes'.
After all, why should you ever (deliberately) take what seems to be the worse of two
options. In real life, though, people often seem to do just this. They eat cake, when they're
trying to diet; they put off urgent pieces of work; they have another glass of wine knowing
that they will regret it in the morning. And they do this (it seems) despite the fact that they
think that it would be best to lose weight; to get the work done; to avoid the hangover.
According to Plato, Socrates (470-399BCE) held that weakness of will was impossible - that
no-one would follow a course of action if they knew that a better course existed. What
looks like weakness of will is really just ignorance of what's best: when I eat the cake it's
because I mistakenly believe that it's the best option (whatever I might say). Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679) also questioned the existence of weakness of will - but for the
opposite reason. According to Hobbes, our actions are not controlled by reason, but by
passion: we simply act on whatever passion is strongest at the time. If I eat the cake, it's
because, at the time, my desire for cake was stronger than my desire to diet (whatever I
might say).
In contrast, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) tried to make space for weakness of will. He
distinguished between the weak (who make a rational choice but then break with it) and
the impetuous (who do not go through a rational thought process at all). The weak might
decide not to drink alcohol on a particular night, because they have to get up early in the
morning, but then decide to have a glass of wine after all; whereas the impetuous would
never consider the next morning in the first place. Aristotle's account of what happens in
these cases is hard to interpret, but he seems to think that weakness of will involves a
moment of befuddlement: at the moment of action, passion interferes with reason,
causing us to make the wrong choice.
Is weakness of will really possible, then? A lot of philosophers still argue that it isn't - that
when we fail to take the best option, it's because we don't consider it best at all. Perhaps
we're just deceiving ourselves about what really matters to us. Others see weakness of
will as a failure of rationality: a moment when we simply do not do what reason suggests
we should.