Course description
What does morality require us to do? Minimize suffering? Act in a way that everyone can, never making exceptions or excuses for ourselves? Develop character traits like courage and generosity? Is morality objective, relative, dependent on god, or created by humans? This course introduces students to the main theories of ethics in Western philosophy. We read major historical texts such as John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, Immanuel Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and other influential philosophers and contemporary thinkers on the moral permissibility of eating animals and abortion, and other concrete issues like if we should, or are even obligated to, give a significant portion of our incomes to charity.
