Philosophical Ethics

PHIL3000, Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, New York, NY

What does it mean to be a good person? What do we owe one another? From where do our moral obligations, if they even exist, derive?  Most of us have a seemingly intuitive answer to these questions, but often an event or situation will challenge our preconceived intuitions to such a degree that a kind of moral vertigo ensues.  Indeed, sometimes the world offers situations that push the boundaries of our ethical presuppositions so greatly that it is hard to tell what the right thing to do actually might be.  In this course, we will study a number of the greatest philosophical solutions to such moral predicaments (i.e. Utilitarianism, Deontology, and Virtue Theory), in an effort to not only understand how and why they believed as they did but to help us understand why we believe what we do.  In modeling the thinkers who have come before us, we will be learning to articulate many of the ethical intuitions we have held, and likely discarding others.  The goal of this philosophical investigation is then not simply to understand the ethical sphere as Aristotle, Kant, and Mill understood it, but primarily to provide us with the practice of addressing ethical dilemmas carefully and critically.  While the course readings will be largely theoretical, consistent use of real-world case studies will anchor our study in the applied side of ethics as well.