3.0

Average Course Rating

This is a course that will engage you in several of the most interesting ethical issues and concerns of our time. “Practical Ethics” also goes by the name of “Applied Ethics.” Under “ethics” we consider the rational and critical bases of moral problems and issues. What sorts of things can we be morally responsible for? What is the good life? What makes an action moral or not? In applied ethics we apply these moral questions that arise from philosophical reflection to particular cases and situations of moral conflict. Thus, a course in applied ethics is case-oriented. The subjects studied in applied ethics are many, more than we can cover. Our main emphasis will be on and we can only cover a few of them including: human rights and problems of freedom and equality, poverty and economic justice, the ethics of the environment, and the right to life and death. Our course will proceed largely as a theme-based course. We will first study some of the basic ethical theories to familiarize ourselves with them, like utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. Then we will address various issues that contain ethical problems in which the solution is not clear. This, we shall see, is often the case. In life, we are confronted with moral dilemmas where the clear choice between right and wrong is not present. That means that a deeper analysis of moral principles behind our choices are necessary. Our class will engage in these conflicts of choice, examining them carefully, engaging very often in in-class discussion and debate.