DESCRIPTION: This is a 6-unit seminar for doctoral students, also offered at the 500-level as a 4-unit course open to a limited number of master's level students. It consists of close reading and discussion of some of the most important philosophical ethicists of the past generation: Bernard Williams, John Rawls, Mary Midgley, Jeffrey Stout, and Alasdair MacIntyre. In addition, we read Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of Christian morality in order to set up the problem for the course. The question that the course is designed to consider is whether it is possible to do ethics without a concept of ultimate reality.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Knowledge: familiarity with some of the best thinking in ethics found in the secular academy. Skills: enhanced ability in moral reasoning, writing, and debate. Attitudes: increased appreciation of the role of religious belief in moral reasoning.

COURSE FORMAT: This is a bi-level course for advanced master's students and for PhD and ThM students. The class will meet ten weeks for a three-hour session. Most of class time will be devoted to discussion of the readings, but there will also be short lectures to introduce readings for the following week.

REQUIRED READING:

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. 3rd ed. University of Notre Dame Press, 2007 (ISBN: 0-268-03504-0; 286 pgs; $26.00).

__________. Dependent Rational Animals. Open Court, 1999 ISBN: (0-8126-9397-3; 172 pgs; $24.95).

Midgley, Mary. Beast and Man. rev. ed. Routledge, 2002 (ISBN: 0-415-03504-0; 368 pgs; $15.56).

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Vintage, 1989 (ISBN: 0-679-72465-6; 185 pgs; $8.95).

Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Belknap, 2001 (ISBN: 0-674-00511-2; 214 pgs; $25.50).

Stout, Jeffrey. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton, 2004 (ISBN: 0-691-10293-7; 348 pgs; $28.95).

Williams, Bernard. Morality. Cambridge University Press, 1993 (ISBN: 0521-45729-7; 98 pgs; $19.99).