Welcome to Philosophy 350: Ethics, a senior-level, three-credit course that provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of the major figures in the western tradition of ancient, modern, and contemporary thought on questions of moral theory and ethics. This overview comprises a combination of thematic and historical elements. Three distinct moral themes are studied: deontology, or the ethics of right and wrong; virtue ethics, or the ethics of honour and dishonour; and utilitarianism, or the ethics of pleasure and pain. Each theme is, in turn, played out historically according to the various figures who were associated with its development over time. The development of each theme is shaped by criticism coming from proponents of the other two themes as well as from within. Disagreement and debate arise over questions like: Is there only one way to live a moral life? If free will is an illusion, is morality also an illusion? Can you act in your own self-interest and act ethically at the same time? Is human reason nothing more than “the slave of the passions”? Is belief in a deity necessary for moral development? The result is a virtual moral dialogue which you are invited to join.

The course is organized around figures throughout the history of philosophy whose contributions to moral theory and ethics have been subjected to centuries of critical scrutiny and survived, not as the last word or final truth, but as the best efforts at exploring the terrain exposed by the questions above as well as many others. As you will see, their answers are often in conflict with one another. The general shape of the course is therefore dialectical, where a particular question is approached, tentatively answered, the answer challenged, the challenge questioned, the question approached from a new direction, and so on. In addition to a focus on the topics themselves and the character of the answers given by various figures, there is an emphasis on your ability to reason from one idea to another and another in a way that can be rationally defended.