Ethics and Social Philosophy Gonzaga University

Table of Contents:

▶️ Description

The world seems to be full of suffering. Do we have a moral responsibility to prevent that suffering? Some think that even with the scale of the problem, it isn’t even in our power to prevent much of it. But, even supposing that it was in your power, there is a question whether we have such a demanding responsibility. After all, presumably, even if we can prevent the suffering, we have to put a lot of time and effort into it.

We begin this course by tackling the question of what our moral duties toward others who are suffering are. We use this topic as a springboard to think about some ethical theories about how we should live our lives in general. We consider several traditional so-called normative theories of morality. But we also spend a considerable amount of our time together thinking about more recent developments in moral philosophy — in particular, we examine some feminist approaches to morality. This will move us squarely into social and political philosophy. Our aim throughout the course is to use these topics and questions as an opportunity to develop the skills for careful and philosophical thinking. 3 credit hours.

📕 Text and Other Materials

All the materials for this course will be available on the course website 💯% free. While you don’t have to pay to have access to these, you are responsible for printing a hard copy of the material and having it with you during class. We have a strict no-electronic device policy.

👋🏼 Office Hours

My office door is always open to you. I invite you to come to office hours as many times as you like. You have the option to meet in person or virtually, though I strongly prefer the former option. In either case, I ask that you sign up using the following link: ➡️

Zoom Scheduler

My office hours are scheduled for these times:

• Wednesdays 12-2 pm and Thursdays 2 pm-4 pm and by appointment

My office is on the second floor of Robinson Hall, Room 202.

☯️ Sections

🎯 Goals and Objectives

This course has two general goals: (1) to help you develop the tools and abilities required to analyze and critically engage with arguments, and (2) to familiarize you with some central issues in moral philosophy.

By the end of the course, the students should be able to:

1. Reproduce arguments for why each of us is responsible for having ethical concerns about and commitments to the good of others.
2. Show a sophisticated understanding of those arguments, identifying the strong and weak points in each.
3. Resolve moral problems consistently by drawing on resources (e.g., conceptions of human nature and the human community) of one of the ethical theories or traditions studied.