Introduction to Ethics

Ethics is the philosophical study of moral principles. This course aims at clarifying the basic concepts of ethics. In general, any class on ethics can be divided into three major parts. Meta-ethical issues are about the nature of ethical questions or problems. Such issues deal, for instance, with whether ethics can be relative to different cultures or different individuals. Meta-ethical questions can even investigate whether there is no such thing as objectively true ethical principles. In this class, we will cover the meta-ethical issues involving moral and cultural relativism, skepticism and subjectivism about moral facts, psychological and ethical egoism.

The second major division of ethics is called normative ethics. Normative ethical questions investigate what principles are the true ethical principles, and this subdivision analyzes three main normative ethical theories: utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and Aristotle’s virtue ethics. We will cover all these three theories in this class.

The final major part of ethics is applied ethics. Applied ethical inquiries aim at finding out the right response to particular problems in actual life. Some major applied ethical issues are environmental ethics, medical ethics, animal ethics, business ethics, etc. In this class, we will analyze two applied ethical problems: the welfare of animals, and sweatshops.