Suppose you're scheduled to teach an upper-division undergraduate seminar in contemporary ethics and you're looking to put together an awesome reading list. Let's leave it ambiguous whether you want the whole course to focus on ethical theory, or whether you'd like to do some applied ethics. Finally, let's assume you'd really like to do it in an inclusive way, not just assigning "Western"/analytic ethics. Which book(s) would you order? Which articles would you assign? Fire away!
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3 responses to “Query: Undergrad seminar in contemporary ethics”
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I tend to start with theory and move to the applied stuff. Usually start with a discussion of why death is bad for the one who dies to try to push students towards a kind of hedonism. Follow that with some attempts to convince them of consequentialism (focusing on Mill’s proof of the principle of utility and some stuff inspired by Moore where I try to convince the students that consequentialism is analytic). A lot of this is set up for Foot and Thomson. I really enjoy trying to convince the students one week that consequentialism is analytic and then working through Foot and Thomson’s attack(s) on the idea of the goodness property, so I’d assign ‘Utilitarianism and the Virtues’ along with a section from Thomson’s -Normativity-. Once we get there, I introduce some non-consequentialist alternatives.
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Hi Marcus,
this is not my topic, but since you mentioned “Western”, perhaps you can find some interesting suggestions about topics to be dealt with (and the primary sources and studies on them) in Indian ethical theories here:
http://indianphilosophyblog.org/2015/02/01/goodness-as-preventing-suffering/
And: http://indianphilosophyblog.org/2014/11/05/stephen-harris-on-suffering-and-buddhist-ethics/
Good luck! -
As someone untrained in Chinese Philosophy, I found this anthology a useful introduction to a number of Chinese Philosophers, including their ethical views. Assigning the whole book would probably be overkill unless you wanted to make it a major focus, but I found the translation and background notes very accessible, and many of them would fit well with standard (and non-standard) issues that tend to be emphasized in Western philosophical ethics.
In addition to the more obvious ‘virtue ethics’ connections that are often highlighted, you have figures like Mozi who often sounds more like a utilitarian, some two millennia before Bentham.
I haven’t yet used this text in class, but I have used it as part of my own background in teaching from an anthology of “World Philosophy.” (also linked).
http://www.hackettpublishing.com/philosophy/readings-in-classical-chinese-philosophy
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/introduction-to-world-philosophy-9780195152319?cc=us&lang=en&
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