This module considers some of the significant ethical theories in the history of moral philosophy and examines how their principles may be applied to ethical issues of practical concern. There is a wide range of topics that are typically understood to come under the category of applied ethics. This semester’s focus will be the ethics of killing. We all believe that killing is generally wrong; that is, killing some beings in certain circumstances is morally wrong and impermissible. It turns out to be more difficult than you might have thought to come up with a “killing principle” that accommodates everything or even most of what we typically want to say about different kinds of killing and why it’s wrong when it is.
At least to begin, we will be focused especially on medical killing (abortion and euthanasia) and the many philosophical distinctions and doctrines that figure so prominently in these debates (intended vs. foreseen death, death by commission vs. death by omission, taking an active stance in relation to a death vs. a passive one, causing death vs. allowing death, and views about sanctity of life, quality of life, and moral status). There’s certainly enough at the beginning and end of life to occupy us for the full term, but we may also want to turn at some point to issues that come up between these two points related to the ethics of killing, like, for example, military killing or killing animals for food.
Assessment
2 short essay assignments (20%), 1 set of mid-term papers (20%), participation (20%), final exam (40%)
References
The module will be conducted by articles generally available through the library’s e-journals. There isn’t a text that contains everything I have in mind to assign and this will also give us some flexibility in the topics we take up.
