| This course introduces the three most basic texts in ethics - works by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill. Aristotle's approach discusses morality in terms of virtue vs. vice. It focuses on what the virtues are, why they are virtues, and how one becomes virtuous. The works of Kant and Mill, on the other hand, seek to determine what obligations we have to others and why we have those obligations. It is by knowing these obligations to others that we can assess the ethical status of our actions before we take them. The course is theoretical, in the sense that it is devoted especially to answering "why" questions, but it also involves some application to help illustrate key points the ethicists make. |
