Key Questions
What are good and evil?
What is the good life?
What is virtue?
Why be moral?
What obligations to people have to one another?
Are moral values objective?
On what grounds should the rightness and wrongness of actions be determined?
Key Philosophers
Maimonides
Kant
Mill
Hobbes
Locke
Rousseau
Stanford - Henry David Thoreau - Walden
IEP - Henry David Thoreau
The Picket Line - a take on Walden
Major Schools of Ethics
Utilitarianism
Thomism
postmodernism
Confuscianism
Major issues
How moral problems and dilemmas occur in every day contexts: medicine, business, law, the media, social media
How could your social media posts come back to haunt you from an ethical/ employ-ability perspective? Should they impact whether or not you are hired?
Abortion
Eugenics
Euthanasia
The Trolley Problem
Overview:
In historical order, the theories to be considered in this article are those of Socrates as presented in certain dialogues of Plato; Plato in the Republic; Aristotle; the Cynics; Cyrenaic hedonism; Epicurus; the Stoics; and Pyrrhonian skepticism.
In their moral theories, the ancient philosophers depended on several important notions. These include virtue and the virtues, happiness (eudaimonia), and the soul.
Virtue is a general term that translates the Greek word aretê. Sometimes aretê is also translated as excellence. Many objects, natural or artificial, have their particular aretê or kind of excellence. There is the excellence of a horse and the excellence of a knife. Then, of course, there is human excellence. Conceptions of human excellence include such disparate figures as the Homeric warrior chieftain and the Athenian statesman of the period of its imperial expansion. Plato's character Meno sums up one important strain of thought when he says that excellence for a man is managing the business of the city so that he benefits his friends, harms his enemies, and comes to no harm himself (Meno 71e). From this description we can see that some versions of human excellence have a problematic relation to the moral virtues.
A virtue is a settled disposition to act in a certain way; justice, for instance, is the settled disposition to act, let's say, so that each one receives their due. This settled disposition includes a practical knowledge about how to bring it about, in each situation, that each receives their due. It also includes a strong positive attitude toward bringing it about that each receives their due. Just people always act justly.
While most ancient philosophers hold that happiness is the proper goal or end of human life, the notion is both simple and complicated, as Aristotle points out. It seems simple to say everyone wants to be happy; it is complicated to say what happiness is. We can approach the problem by discussing, first, the relation of happiness to human excellence and, then, the relation of human excellence to the moral virtues.
Ancient philosophers argued that whatever activities constitute human living — e.g., those associated with fear — one can engage in those activities in a mediocre or even a poor way. One can feel fear and react to dangerous situations sometimes appropriately and sometimes inappropriately; or one might always act shamefully and dishonorably. However, to carry out the activities that constitute human living well over a whole lifetime, or long stretches of it, is living well or doing well. At this point the relation of happiness to human excellence should be clear. Human excellence is the psychological basis for carrying out the activities of a human life well; to that extent human excellence is also happiness. While the unhappy person deals with a vital and dynamic emotion like fear in an inept way, the happy person handles fear skillfully, and thereby exhibits human excellence.
Courage is a reliable disposition to react to fear in an appropriate way. What counts as appropriate entails harnessing fear for good or honorable ends. Such ends are not confined to one's own welfare but include, e.g., the welfare of one's city. In this way, moral virtues become the kind of human excellence that is other-regarding.
In this way, then, ancient philosophers typically justify moral virtue. Being courageous, just, and moderate is valuable for the virtuous person because these virtues are inextricably linked with happiness.
Finally, a few words about the soul are in order since, typically, philosophers argue that virtue is a good of the soul. In some ways, this claim is found in many traditions. Many thinkers argue that being moral does not necessarily provide physical beauty, health, or prosperity. Rather, as something good, virtue must be understood as belonging to the soul; it is a psychological good. However, in order to explain virtue as a good of the soul, one does not have to hold that the soul is immortal.
This position that links happiness and virtue is called eudaimonism — a word based on the principal Greek word for happiness, eudaimonia. By eudaimonism, we will mean one of several theses: (a) virtue, together with its active exercise, is identical with happiness; (b) virtue, together with its activities, is the most important and dominant constituent of happiness; (c) virtue is the only means to happiness. However, one must be cautious not to conclude that ancient theories in general attempt to construe the value of virtue simply as a means to achieving happiness. Each theory, as we shall see, has its own approach to the nature of the link between virtue and happiness.
These reflections on virtue can provide an occasion for contrasting ancient moral theory and modern. One way to put the contrast is to say that ancient moral theory is agent-centered while modern moral theory is action-centered. To say that it is action-centered means that, as a theory of morality, it explains morality, to begin with, in terms of actions and their circumstances, and the ways in which actions are moral or immoral. We can roughly divide modern thinkers into two groups. Those who judge the morality of an action on the basis of its known or expected consequences are consequentialist; those who judge the morality of an action on the basis of its conformity to certain kinds of laws, prohibitions, or positive commandments are deontologists. The former include, e.g., those utilitarians who say an action is moral if it provides the greatest good for the greatest number. Deontologists say an action is moral if it conforms to a moral principle, e.g., the obligation to tell the truth. While these thinkers are not uninterested in the moral disposition to produce such actions, or in what disposition is required if they are to show any moral worth in the persons who do them, their focus is on actions, their consequences, and the rules or other principles to which they conform.
Focus Lesson
The Ramayana - a short version
The Worksheet
The full lesson plan
What are good and evil?
What is the good life?
What is virtue?
Why be moral?
What obligations to people have to one another?
Are moral values objective?
On what grounds should the rightness and wrongness of actions be determined?
Key Philosophers
Maimonides
Kant
Mill
Hobbes
Locke
Rousseau
Stanford - Henry David Thoreau - Walden
IEP - Henry David Thoreau
The Picket Line - a take on Walden
Major Schools of Ethics
Utilitarianism
Thomism
postmodernism
Confuscianism
Major issues
How moral problems and dilemmas occur in every day contexts: medicine, business, law, the media, social media
How could your social media posts come back to haunt you from an ethical/ employ-ability perspective? Should they impact whether or not you are hired?
Abortion
Eugenics
Euthanasia
The Trolley Problem
Overview:
In historical order, the theories to be considered in this article are those of Socrates as presented in certain dialogues of Plato; Plato in the Republic; Aristotle; the Cynics; Cyrenaic hedonism; Epicurus; the Stoics; and Pyrrhonian skepticism.
In their moral theories, the ancient philosophers depended on several important notions. These include virtue and the virtues, happiness (eudaimonia), and the soul.
Virtue is a general term that translates the Greek word aretê. Sometimes aretê is also translated as excellence. Many objects, natural or artificial, have their particular aretê or kind of excellence. There is the excellence of a horse and the excellence of a knife. Then, of course, there is human excellence. Conceptions of human excellence include such disparate figures as the Homeric warrior chieftain and the Athenian statesman of the period of its imperial expansion. Plato's character Meno sums up one important strain of thought when he says that excellence for a man is managing the business of the city so that he benefits his friends, harms his enemies, and comes to no harm himself (Meno 71e). From this description we can see that some versions of human excellence have a problematic relation to the moral virtues.
A virtue is a settled disposition to act in a certain way; justice, for instance, is the settled disposition to act, let's say, so that each one receives their due. This settled disposition includes a practical knowledge about how to bring it about, in each situation, that each receives their due. It also includes a strong positive attitude toward bringing it about that each receives their due. Just people always act justly.
While most ancient philosophers hold that happiness is the proper goal or end of human life, the notion is both simple and complicated, as Aristotle points out. It seems simple to say everyone wants to be happy; it is complicated to say what happiness is. We can approach the problem by discussing, first, the relation of happiness to human excellence and, then, the relation of human excellence to the moral virtues.
Ancient philosophers argued that whatever activities constitute human living — e.g., those associated with fear — one can engage in those activities in a mediocre or even a poor way. One can feel fear and react to dangerous situations sometimes appropriately and sometimes inappropriately; or one might always act shamefully and dishonorably. However, to carry out the activities that constitute human living well over a whole lifetime, or long stretches of it, is living well or doing well. At this point the relation of happiness to human excellence should be clear. Human excellence is the psychological basis for carrying out the activities of a human life well; to that extent human excellence is also happiness. While the unhappy person deals with a vital and dynamic emotion like fear in an inept way, the happy person handles fear skillfully, and thereby exhibits human excellence.
Courage is a reliable disposition to react to fear in an appropriate way. What counts as appropriate entails harnessing fear for good or honorable ends. Such ends are not confined to one's own welfare but include, e.g., the welfare of one's city. In this way, moral virtues become the kind of human excellence that is other-regarding.
In this way, then, ancient philosophers typically justify moral virtue. Being courageous, just, and moderate is valuable for the virtuous person because these virtues are inextricably linked with happiness.
Finally, a few words about the soul are in order since, typically, philosophers argue that virtue is a good of the soul. In some ways, this claim is found in many traditions. Many thinkers argue that being moral does not necessarily provide physical beauty, health, or prosperity. Rather, as something good, virtue must be understood as belonging to the soul; it is a psychological good. However, in order to explain virtue as a good of the soul, one does not have to hold that the soul is immortal.
This position that links happiness and virtue is called eudaimonism — a word based on the principal Greek word for happiness, eudaimonia. By eudaimonism, we will mean one of several theses: (a) virtue, together with its active exercise, is identical with happiness; (b) virtue, together with its activities, is the most important and dominant constituent of happiness; (c) virtue is the only means to happiness. However, one must be cautious not to conclude that ancient theories in general attempt to construe the value of virtue simply as a means to achieving happiness. Each theory, as we shall see, has its own approach to the nature of the link between virtue and happiness.
These reflections on virtue can provide an occasion for contrasting ancient moral theory and modern. One way to put the contrast is to say that ancient moral theory is agent-centered while modern moral theory is action-centered. To say that it is action-centered means that, as a theory of morality, it explains morality, to begin with, in terms of actions and their circumstances, and the ways in which actions are moral or immoral. We can roughly divide modern thinkers into two groups. Those who judge the morality of an action on the basis of its known or expected consequences are consequentialist; those who judge the morality of an action on the basis of its conformity to certain kinds of laws, prohibitions, or positive commandments are deontologists. The former include, e.g., those utilitarians who say an action is moral if it provides the greatest good for the greatest number. Deontologists say an action is moral if it conforms to a moral principle, e.g., the obligation to tell the truth. While these thinkers are not uninterested in the moral disposition to produce such actions, or in what disposition is required if they are to show any moral worth in the persons who do them, their focus is on actions, their consequences, and the rules or other principles to which they conform.
Focus Lesson
The Ramayana - a short version
The Worksheet
The full lesson plan
the_ramayana.docx | |
File Size: | 40 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Cartoon Intro - Ethics Summary
How are we to Live?
Socrates - "The unexamined life is not worth living." (Plato's Apology. He refused opportunities to escape his death sentence because he claimed he had a duty to obey his tacit agreement to follow the laws of Athens.
Euthyphro - Ethics applies to everyone equally. This is called the Universality Condition, Most consider it an essential part of ethical theory.
Divine Command Theory: Something is moral, based on the will of a god or gods.
Issues arising from this: If an act is right because a god said so, then it could change. If god decides good/bad, then god can't be good or bad (above those concepts)... A god who makes the rules can't break them because they are his to begin with.
But what about inherent good? What if god loves an act because it is inherently good. This would take some power from god.
Objective Morality: If right and wrong are independent of god, then there is a consistent right and wrong.
Motivations: If we imbue someone with power, will they act differently? Did he always have certain urges? Will he go wild, now that he is undetected?
Thomas Hobbes: "Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." - Leviathan.
Hobbes proposes the SOCIAL CONTRACT - where we give up some liberties because people are self-interested and inherently evil. We need law to keep order.
The concept of competing self-interest underlies CAPITALISM.
Hume:
Kant: Deontologist - Attributes right / wrong to entire classes of actions. Certain types of actions are always bad, and certain things are always good. Absolutist.
The example of Fred / Ted, the butchers who are both honest - one from duty, the other from greed and fearing loss of business - one is moral and the other is not. So intention is important.
Utilitarianism - The purpose of the action is important. What is the end result?
Consequentialism - an act is right or wrong based on the consequences. Add up consequences in terms of pleasure and pain, then look at the moral requirement.
Intensity of pleasure or pain.
Fecundity - the chance that a pleasure will be followed by other pleasures, a pain by further pains
Duration - how long it will last.
Purity
The chance4 that the generated pleasure will be followed by pains
Certainty - how likely it will deliver the same result.
Propinquity - how close temporally the pleasure or pain is to the act
Extent - The number of persons
How are we to Live?
Socrates - "The unexamined life is not worth living." (Plato's Apology. He refused opportunities to escape his death sentence because he claimed he had a duty to obey his tacit agreement to follow the laws of Athens.
Euthyphro - Ethics applies to everyone equally. This is called the Universality Condition, Most consider it an essential part of ethical theory.
Divine Command Theory: Something is moral, based on the will of a god or gods.
Issues arising from this: If an act is right because a god said so, then it could change. If god decides good/bad, then god can't be good or bad (above those concepts)... A god who makes the rules can't break them because they are his to begin with.
But what about inherent good? What if god loves an act because it is inherently good. This would take some power from god.
Objective Morality: If right and wrong are independent of god, then there is a consistent right and wrong.
Motivations: If we imbue someone with power, will they act differently? Did he always have certain urges? Will he go wild, now that he is undetected?
Thomas Hobbes: "Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." - Leviathan.
Hobbes proposes the SOCIAL CONTRACT - where we give up some liberties because people are self-interested and inherently evil. We need law to keep order.
The concept of competing self-interest underlies CAPITALISM.
Hume:
Kant: Deontologist - Attributes right / wrong to entire classes of actions. Certain types of actions are always bad, and certain things are always good. Absolutist.
The example of Fred / Ted, the butchers who are both honest - one from duty, the other from greed and fearing loss of business - one is moral and the other is not. So intention is important.
Utilitarianism - The purpose of the action is important. What is the end result?
Consequentialism - an act is right or wrong based on the consequences. Add up consequences in terms of pleasure and pain, then look at the moral requirement.
Intensity of pleasure or pain.
Fecundity - the chance that a pleasure will be followed by other pleasures, a pain by further pains
Duration - how long it will last.
Purity
The chance4 that the generated pleasure will be followed by pains
Certainty - how likely it will deliver the same result.
Propinquity - how close temporally the pleasure or pain is to the act
Extent - The number of persons