Our ideas and assumptions about what is morally right or wrong are an inescapable part of how we live in the world.  However, there is also little consensus on how to explain or understand this part of life.  In this class we will look at some of the ways that philosophers have attempted this explanation.  To do so we will examine the major systematic theories of ethics, some of the ways in which these theories have been applied, and some of the modern critiques of theoretical morality.