This course will introduce you to the leading theorists in the western ethical tradition.  Though the following “different” themes will certainly be focused on in this class – the objectivity of values, the social construction and situation of the moral person, the relation of individual right to moral law, the grounds for moral calculation, and the challenge of relativism to moral realism. Basic themes, concepts, and problems will be developed and “carried over” through our readings of the texts. The goal of this course is to impart a historically informed perspective which can: 1) serve as a first foundation to continued study in ethical theory; 2) further develop the capacity for reading comprehension and critique; 3) give confidence in (and perhaps a desire for) approaching texts from different time periods and cultures; 4) help develop a perspective from which the current culture or society can be analyzed and critiqued.

Texts:

Plato, Symposium

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals