Normative Ethics

Catalog description

Some particular acts are morally right; other acts are morally wrong. The task of normative ethics is to provide a general account of which acts are morally right or wrong and why they are morally right or wrong. The primary goal of this course is to provide an advanced survey of two theories that dominate contemporary ethics: consequentialism and deontology. Consequentialists - such as, most famously, the British utilitarians: Bentham, Mill and Sidgwick - hold that acts are right or wrong because of their good or bad consequences. Consequentialism faces numerous objections: that it is wrong to make trade-offs between benefits and harms to different individuals; that it requires us to violate rights; that it is too demanding; and that it does not respect our special obligations to our friends and family. These objections are used to motivate deontology. We will explore Immanuel Kant's influential version deontology, and the challenges that it faces in relation to the prohibition on lying, on how we should treat the risk of wrong-doing, and on the moral status of animals. The secondary goal of this course is to develop the philosophical skills that we use to understand, evaluate, and defend moral theories.