Whatever our cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, all of us seek to achieve a good life. Though most people immediately identify that with happiness, there can be little doubt that the good life must also include being a moral person. For no matter how much pleasure, money, and power we happen to have at our disposal, most people will ultimately find it unsatisfying unless they feel that they deserve their situation in life by virtue of the acts they have performed and the causes they have supported. The purpose of this course is to examine and clarify the moral component of the good life. In the first part we will examine foundational moral theories, including classical, religious, contractarian, Kantian, utilitarian and Nietzschean (along with modern elaborations and examples). Our focus in the second part of the course will be on applied ethics in major contemporary moral issues that people are likely to come across in their everyday lives such as business ethics, human rights, abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty, and animal rights and environmentalism. Hence, the course considers moral dilemmas that arise in our relations with family, friends, lovers, work, business, law, health care, animals, and the environment. Emphasis will be on evaluating about practical moral dilemmas critically and thoughtfully. Students who have taken PHIL 403 Ethics and Moral Theory cannot take this course.
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