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School of Philosophy · ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
When we ask how we should live, what we should do, and which ways of treating each other are good or bad, we are asking the questions of normative ethics. Normative ethical theory is the part of philosophy that aspires to give a general and systematic set of answers to those questions. This course offers an advanced undergraduate overview of contemporary normative ethical theory. It will explain the differences between the main types of normative ethical theory, the underlying issues that divide them, the objections that they face, and the elaborations that theories of each type can make in trying to deal with those objections. An emphasis in the course will be on the question: What are the most basic values or reasons from which the content of ethics derives? We will look at the ways in which different theories have tried to answer this question, and we will ask what methods of reasoning can be used to answer it.
First Essay (2,250 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3
Second Essay (2,250 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3
Preparation and Participation, consisting of submission of weekly reading notes and attendance and participation in classes.
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 4
130 hours of total student learning time made up from: a) 36 hours of contact: 24 hours of lectures and 12 hours of tutorials b) 94 hours of independent student research, reading and writing
All readings for the course will be supplied on the Wattle site. Preliminary Reading David Copp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) Hugh LaFollette and Ingmar Persson (eds), The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory 2nd edition (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2013) Julia Driver, Ethics: The Fundamentals (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006)