Splash Biography

What is virtue? What is justice? Where does God fit into our notions of what virtue and justice are? Is there an absolute duty to God? How does one respond when the laws of the state violate one's conscience? How important is having faith to being a good person? This course aims to explain the major ethical systems and then to put these systems in conversation with Judaism and Christianity. We shall briefly examine major philosophical and religious thinkers on ethics such as Moses, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Saint Paul, Saint Thomas Acquinas, Martin Luther, Machiavelli, Kant, Kierkegaard, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Martin Luther King Jr. There will be a basic overview of three normative ethical systems – virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontological ethics. There will then be a brief lecture on these three systems along with class discussion about their relative merits. Then, there will be a second brief lecture on normative ethics in relation to Judeo-Christian religion, followed by more discussion.