PHL 2073 Ethical Continuations
Ethics, or how to live your life, was to Socrates the basic aspect of philosophy. Socrates fought the sophists, and debates about knowledge and conduct have remained a staple of Western philosophy. This seminar class will deal with major approaches to the issues of ethics: Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, Epicetetus and Stoicism, Spinoza, Scottish moral sense theorists like David Hume, Kant's practical reason, Fichte, William James, Utilitarians, Sartre, Foucault and current debates. Basic concepts to be investigated are virtue ethics, the ethics of principle of duty, how to determine the good, post-modern views of self-creation as ethical agent, freedom versus determinism, relation between the individual and the society.
LA