Ethics

Catalog description

What are our most basic values? What are the ethical principles by which we should judge our actions, ourselves, and our lives? What is involved in living a good human life? How can we reconcile the demands of morality with the personal obligations that spring from friendships and other relationships? Do the ends ever justify the means? This course will grapple with these and other questions through exploration of three of the most influential theories in Western ethical philosophy: Aristotle's ethics of virtue, Immanuel Kant's moral rationalism, and John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism. Students will also encounter one of modern morality's harshest critics: Friedrich Nietzsche.