TMS - Ethics, A History of Moral Thought

TMS - Ethics, A History of Moral Thought


Course Syllabus
Lecture 1 Being Good and Everything Else: An Introduction

Lecture 2 Being Good and Being Traditional: Why Do We Call It ΓÇ£Ancient WisdomΓÇ¥?

Lecture 3 Being Good and Being Wise: Can Virtue Be Taught?

Lecture 4 Being Good and Being Pious: PlatoΓÇÖs Euthyphro

Lecture 5 Being Good and Being Happy: PlatoΓÇÖs Republic

Lecture 6 AristotleΓÇÖs Ethics

Lecture 7 Being Good and Being Successful: Aquinas on the Meaning of Life.

Lecture 8 Being Good and Being Successful According to Machiavelli: Is It Either/Or?

Lecture 9 Being Good and Being Evil: Is Humanity Naturally Good? (Hobbes vs. Rousseau)

Lecture 10 Being Good and Being Scientific: Can Morality Be a Science? (Descartes, Hume, Mill)

Lecture 11 Being Good and Being Fair: The Ethics of Kant

Lecture 12 Being Good and Being Secular: Can an Atheist Be Ethical? The Ethics of Jean-Paul Sartre

Lecture 13 Being Good in Eastern Ethics

Lecture 14 Being Good and Surviving: Ethics and the Future of Western Civilization

This course addresses some of the eternal questions that man has grappled with since the beginning of time. What is good? What is bad? Why is justice important? Why is it better to be good and just than it is to be bad and unjust? Most human beings have the faculty to discern between right and wrong, good and bad behavior, and to make judgments over what is just and what is unjust. But why are ethics important to us? This course looks at our history as ethical beings. WeΓÇÖll travel into the very heart of mankindΓÇÖs greatest philosophical dilemmasΓÇöto the origins of our moral values and the problem of ethics. Are ethics universal, absolute and unchangingΓÇöor are they culturally relative, changing, and man-made? Furthermore, weΓÇÖll delve into the creation of ethical systemsΓÇönot just for ourselves, but also for society at large. And we will consider the ongoing process of establishing ethical frameworks for society.

The philosopher William James separated questions into DEAD issues and LIVE issues. For example: Are we good or evil? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Are we free or determined? In this lecture, we focus on the LIVE issues or the BIG QUESTIONS.