SCHEDULE OF TOPICS AND READINGS

 

Module I:     Are there moral truths? A primer in metaethics

 

Week 1        Introduction

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Plato, Euthyphro

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Week 2        God and Morality: The Euthyphro Problem        

 

James Rachels, “Does Morality Depend Upon Religion?”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, short excerpt Rebellion

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Parable of the Madman”

 

Week 3        Is it All Relative? Moral Relativism and its Discontents

       

Mary Midgley, “Trying Out One’s New Sword”

James Rachels, “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism”

Plato, Ring of Gyges

 

Week 4        Slave of the Passions? Reason, Emotion, and Morality            

David Hume, Enquiry selections

A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic Selections

Annette Baier, “What is an Emotion About?”

Sabine Döring, “Why Be Emotional?”

 

Module II:    Utilitarianism and Other Consequentialisms

 

Week 5        Hedonism and Utilitarianism            

Jeremy Bentham, Principles

J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism

Robert Nozick, “The Experience Machine”

 

Week 6        The 99% and the 1%: Utilitarianism and Economic Inequality       

 Peter Singer, “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”

Marina Hyde, “If Jeff Bezos wants to help low-income people why not just pay them better?”

Jan Narveson, “Feeding the Hungry”

 

Week 7        Love and the Critique of Hedonism        

 

Zadie Smith, “Joy”

Cornel West, “Nihilism in Black America”

Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism”

 

Week 8        Is Death Bad?                

 

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

Thomas Nagel, “Death”

 

Module III:    Kantian Rationalism and the Ethics of Agency

 

Week 9        Morality as Rationality: Kantian Ethics        

 

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas”

Groundwork Chapters 1 & II

Christine Korsgaard, "Kant's Formula of Universal Law"

 

Week 10        Autonomy and Consent: Kant and Applied Ethics    

 

Berit Brogaard, “Sex by Deception”

Michael Heumer, “Is There a Right to Own a Gun?”

 

Week 11        What is Evil? Rationality and the Problem of Evil  

 

Hannah Arendt, Selections from Eichmann in Jerusalem

Kant, Selections from the Second Critique

 

Module IV:     Suffering and the Challenge of Nihilism

 

Week 12        Suffering and the Ethics of Compassion        

 

Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Sufferings of the World”                                 

Iris Murdoch, Selections from The Sovereignty of Good

J. Donovan, “Attention to Suffering: A Feminist Care Ethic”

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Journey to Mindfulness

 

Week 13        The Death of God and Nietzsche’s Challenge    

 

Nietzsche, Genealogy, First & Second Essay

 

Week 14       Creating Values: Who are Nietzsche’s Free Spirits?    

 

Nadeem Hussain, “Honest Illusion”

Thomas Nagel, “The Absurd”