Ethics Courses

Studying ethics is personally rewarding, academically and professionally advantageous, and addresses issues foundational to the College’s mission of educating students to think deeply, live honorably, and engage the intellectual and social challenges of their times.

Accordingly, taking ethics courses, while essential to a well-rounded study of philosophy, is enriching regardless of a student’s major. The course “Life’s Meaning” requires students to grapple with the deepest questions about how we should live and what is of ultimate value. “Contemporary Moral Problems” involves critically exploring diverse views on contentious topics such as abortion and economic inequality. Courses in ethical theory probe the nature of morality and justice and the foundations of moral obligations, rights, and duties; these topics are especially salient to students studying human rights or political science or intending to go to law school. Students considering careers in nursing, medicine, or public health find courses in bioethics particularly illuminating; it is essential that these students grasp the ethical significance of debates about such issues as informed consent, genetic enhancement, access to healthcare, how to adjudicate between liberty and public health during a pandemic, etc.

All ethics courses offered by the philosophy department foster students’ development of broadly applicable skills pertaining to textual and conceptual analysis, problem-solving, logical argumentation, and clear communication. Although only some ethics courses explicitly discuss leadership (and count as SUMMIT leadership courses), all of them advance students’ potential for ethical leadership by prompting students to reflect critically on their own values and principles. As suggested above, such reflection is crucial not only to becoming an ethical leader but to living an authentic human life and grappling productively with the most challenging intellectual and social issues of one’s time.

PHI-101: Introduction to Ethics (4.00)

How ought we to live? What makes an act right, or a person virtuous? Is morality relative to culture? These are some of the questions we will confront in our critical examination of some major moral theories. Introductory level.

PHI-106: Bioethics (4.00)

Recent moral issues in medicine, such as euthanasia, abortion, experimentation on human and other animal subjects, justice in providing health care and in the allocation of scarce resources.

PHI-109: Environmental Ethics (4.00)

An exploration of moral issues arising from relations among human beings, non-human animals, and the environment. Specific topics may include the value and moral standing of individuals, species, and ecosystems; biodiversity, development, and sustainability; and environmental justice and environmental racism.

PHI-112: Contemporary Moral Problems (4.00)

An introduction to applied ethics through a variety of issues. Topics may include ethical treatment of animals, abortion, poverty, euthanasia, or the death penalty. Ethical theories will also be introduced.

PHI-196: Topics in Applied Ethics (4.00)

This entry-level course will introduce students to one area of applied ethics. The area of focus may be sexual ethics, bioethics, or something else. Students will also learn how to read, analyze, and write philosophy.

PHI-212: Moral Philosophy (4.00)

An introduction to some of the West's most significant and influential ethical theories through original texts. Works of Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, and Mill will be discussed.

Course requisites: Any 100-level PHI or POL course except PHI-103.

PHI-304: Life's Meaning (4.00)

What makes a human life meaningful? In this seminar-style philosophical exploration of life's meaning, we will consider the concept of a meaningful life, the conditions for meaning in life, and the relation of such things as God, mortality, virtue, and happiness to meaning in life. Our main sources will be texts in contemporary, Western, secular, analytic philosophy; students will have the opportunity to consider other approaches through independent research.

Course requisites: One 200-level PHI course.

PHI-318: Ethics (4.00)

A contemporary philosophical exploration of major issues in and approached to ethics - including metaethics (which concerns the nature of morality and moral discourse) and normative ethical theory (which concerns how we ought to live).

Course requisites: One 200-level PHI course or permission of instructor.

PHI-396: Topics in Ethics (4.00)

TOPICS IN ETHICS--A semester-long exploration of the work of a particular philosopher (such as Kant) a particular approach to ethics (such as contemporary virtue theory), or a theoretical problem or debate (such as criticism of morality or moral theory).Prerequisite: one 200-level course in philosophy.

Description for "ETHICAL ISSUES IN THE CREATION AND TERMINATION OF LIFE"--This course will address a constellation of theoretical and practical questions related to human interventions in life and death. Among the topics we will address are: When, if ever, is killing humans morally justified? For example, is capital punishment defensible? What moral obligations do we have to prevent humans from dying? Are we obligated, for example, to save people around the globe from starvation? How do we define the beginning and end of human life? For example, is someone who is in a persistent vegetative state a human life? Is a fetus a human life? What sorts of moral constraints apply to reproductive technologies? Is it moral, for example, to use in vitro fertilization to select the sex of one's child?

Description for "HUMAN RIGHTS"--This course is a philosophical exploration of human rights, with a focus on their nature and basis. Among the questions we will ask are: What are human rights? More specifically, are human rights identical with, or grounded in, what moral philosophers have long called 'natural rights'; or are they a relatively recent political invention, with only loose connections to that older idea? Is there some special capacity or dignity in virtue of which human beings have these rights? What are the criteria for determining whether a purported human right really is a human right?

Description for "MORAL PSYCHOLOGY, THE VIRTUES, AND THE HUMAN GOOD"-- Students will develop an understanding of debates in contemporary moral philosophy and moral psychology, learn about the relationship between ethics and psychology, and read famous thinkers from the history of moral philosophy, with a particular focus on "virtue ethics." Most importantly, students will be asked to consider the ethical implications of our emotional lives and to reconsider what it means to do moral philosophy.