Descriptions for ETHS 390 - Fall 2018

ETHS 390-01A:  Justice in the 21st Century
Dan Finn
Few issues are as fundamental to human life as justice: everyone is in favor of it.  Yet few issues are as controversial: justice has widely divergent meanings for different people.  This course will examine in detail five rival understandings of justice prevalent in debates today.  Students will read two novels, and five philosophical or theological treatments of the notion of justice in our joint efforts to come to grips with what justice means in our lives: personally and on a national and global scale.  Like every Ethics Common Seminar, the goal of this course is to improve each student's ability to make good moral judgments.

ETHS 390-02A:  Contemporary Moral Problems:  Lies, Sex, and Work
Kari-Shane Zimmerman
This course attends to contemporary moral problems in the following areas: lies, sex, and work. In exploring these “problem areas” of morality, it also seeks to attend to connections between them and to question whether allowing problems to drive our moral reflection is the best approach when attempting to make good moral judgments. In addition, the course will attend to the relationship between persons, virtues, and acts and between areas of morality typically considered “personal” and those considered to be “social.” The approach will be interdisciplinary, but we will accent Christian ethical approaches in the areas of lying, work, and sexuality. Also, additional course goals include (but are not limited to) enhancing students’ ability to read texts closely, both critically and charitably, as well as improving students’ ability to express themselves both orally and in writing.  

ETHS 390-03A:  Ethics of War:  What do Ethics Mean during a Time of War?
Christi Siver
Cross-listed with POLS 358B
If General Sherman was right that "war is hell," the concept of ethics seems completely irrelevant.  However, as human society has evolved, numerous politicians, philosophers, and religious figures have agreed on the need for an ethics in war, even if they have not agreed on the content of those ethics.  Students will be introduced to formal ethical frameworks and discover the dilemmas they encounter when applying these frameworks to real world situations.  Students will compare how these ethical frameworks overlap and diverge from political values.  We will debate particular dilemmas in warfare, including which authorities can declare war and when they are justified in doing so, what methods can be used in war, and what obligations both combatants and non-combatants have.  Students will work with a basic ethics text supplemented by contemporary articles outlining modern dilemmas related to ethics of war.

ETHS 390-04A:  Contemporary Moral Problems:  Lies, Sex, and Work
Kari-Shane Zimmerman
This course attends to contemporary moral problems in the following areas: lies, sex, and work. In exploring these “problem areas” of morality, it also seeks to attend to connections between them and to question whether allowing problems to drive our moral reflection is the best approach when attempting to make good moral judgments. In addition, the course will attend to the relationship between persons, virtues, and acts and between areas of morality typically considered “personal” and those considered to be “social.” The approach will be interdisciplinary, but we will accent Christian ethical approaches in the areas of lying, work, and sexuality. Also, additional course goals include (but are not limited to) enhancing students’ ability to read texts closely, both critically and charitably, as well as improving students’ ability to express themselves both orally and in writing.  

ETHS 390-05A:  Healthcare Ethics
Kathy Ohman
This course directs students to re-think ethics in today's system of healthcare, where the best possibilities for ethical healthcare in this century lie beyond traditional and mainstream thought. Students will question assumptions guided by the major principles of healthcare ethics and reflect deeply on clinical cases across healthcare disciplines from the perspective of professional and consumer.

Ethics Common Seminar Learning Outcomes:

  • Identify ethical issues inherent in situations common in modern life and professional careers in healthcare.
  • Articulate multiple theoretical perspectives on contested ethical issues.
  • Articulate coherent arguments in support of personal normative judgments about contested ethical issues, including arguments that are grounded in ethical and other analytical or scholarly perspectives.
  • Demonstrate a critical understanding of the conceptual foundations of the ethical and other scholarly perspectives addressed in the course.

ETHS 390-06A:  Good, Evil & the Limitations of Human Nature
John Houston
All of us are familiar with the terms “good” and “evil”. Furthermore, we have all at some time used these terms in reference to persons or their actions. This phenomenon is the focal point of this class. In this course we will seek to address a variety of questions related to good and evil. Some of these questions include: What are the conceptual origins of our judgments about good and evil? Can we objectively say of some actions or persons that they are good or evil?—Or do terms like good and evil merely serve as expressions of our individual preferences? In virtue of what do we describe people as good or evil? Are some people born evil and others good, or do they become so? If they become so, how does this happen? Philosophers and famous literary personalities have grappled with these questions. We will draw upon their resources to reflect on these questions and attempt to articulate our own answers to them. In this course students will be required to read, think, write, attend class, and contribute to thoughtful dialogue.

ETHS 390-07A:  Good, Evil & the Limitations of Human Nature
John Houston
All of us are familiar with the terms “good” and “evil”. Furthermore, we have all at some time used these terms in reference to persons or their actions. This phenomenon is the focal point of this class. In this course we will seek to address a variety of questions related to good and evil. Some of these questions include: What are the conceptual origins of our judgments about good and evil? Can we objectively say of some actions or persons that they are good or evil?—Or do terms like good and evil merely serve as expressions of our individual preferences? In virtue of what do we describe people as good or evil? Are some people born evil and others good, or do they become so? If they become so, how does this happen? Philosophers and famous literary personalities have grappled with these questions. We will draw upon their resources to reflect on these questions and attempt to articulate our own answers to them. In this course students will be required to read, think, write, attend class, and contribute to thoughtful dialogue.

ETHS 390-08A:  Justice in the 21st Century
Dan Finn
Few issues are as fundamental to human life as justice: everyone is in favor of it.  Yet few issues are as controversial: justice has widely divergent meanings for different people.  This course will examine in detail five rival understandings of justice prevalent in debates today.  Students will read two novels, and five philosophical or theological treatments of the notion of justice in our joint efforts to come to grips with what justice means in our lives: personally and on a national and global scale.  Like every Ethics Common Seminar, the goal of this course is to improve each student's ability to make good moral judgments.

ETHS 390A-01A:  Healthcare Ethics
Kathy Ohman
This course directs students to re-think ethics in today's system of healthcare, where the best possibilities for ethical healthcare in this century lie beyond traditional and mainstream thought. Students will question assumptions guided by the major principles of healthcare ethics and reflect deeply on clinical cases across healthcare disciplines from the perspective of professional and consumer.

Ethics Common Seminar Learning Outcomes:

  • Identify ethical issues inherent in situations common in modern life and professional careers in healthcare.
  • Articulate multiple theoretical perspectives on contested ethical issues.
  • Articulate coherent arguments in support of personal normative judgments about contested ethical issues, including arguments that are grounded in ethical and other analytical or scholarly perspectives.
  • Demonstrate a critical understanding of the conceptual foundations of the ethical and other scholarly perspectives addressed in the course.

ETHS 390A-02A:  Healthcare Ethics 
Kathy Ohman 
This course directs students to re-think ethics in today's system of healthcare, where the best possibilities for ethical healthcare in this century lie beyond traditional and mainstream thought. Students will question assumptions guided by the major principles of healthcare ethics and reflect deeply on clinical cases across healthcare disciplines from the perspective of professional and consumer.

Ethics Common Seminar Learning Outcomes:

  • Identify ethical issues inherent in situations common in modern life and professional careers in healthcare.
  • Articulate multiple theoretical perspectives on contested ethical issues.
  • Articulate coherent arguments in support of personal normative judgments about contested ethical issues, including arguments that are grounded in ethical and other analytical or scholarly perspectives.
  • Demonstrate a critical understanding of the conceptual foundations of the ethical and other scholarly perspectives addressed in the course.

HONR 390A-01A:  The Medical Professional in the Modern World
Jeffrey Anderson
The word "professional" today connotes an individual with well-developed skills, specialized knowledge, and expertise, who conforms to the standards of a profession.  The original meaning of "professional" as one who "makes a profession of faith" in the face of demanding circumstances has been all but lost in the medical profession.  This class will use the burgeoning literature of medicine, written by, for, and about medical professionals, in order to explore the full range of "professional" challenges facing today's medical professionals.
The practice of medicine is rife with ethical dilemmas.  By exploring the efforts of medical professionals to counter the institutional forces that constrain them and to find their own solid ground to stand upon, this course aims to cultivate the habit of moral reflection in future medical professionals.  Although this course will primarily focus on the experiences of medical doctors, it should also be of interest to those aspiring to other medical and non-medical careers.

HONR 390D-01A:  War and the Memory of War
Nick Hayes 
Our course examines the ethical issues of the conduct and representation of war from the Great War (WWI) to today's "war on terrorism." Our theme follows the shift of strategy from targeting military casualties to the predominant emphasis on civilian casualties as evident in the case studies of the Vietnam War, WWI, the Holocaust, the wars of genocide in our time, Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the "war on terrorism."

PHIL 321-01A:  Moral Philosophy
Dennis Beach
The questions of ethics--of how to live and what to do--are continually confronting us in public and private life.  Philosophical ethics tries to organize ethical experience, presenting theories of good and bad, right and wrong to help guide us.  In this course we will use significant Western philosophical texts from ancient times to the last few decades to study different approaches to the classic questions of ethics.  The theories we'll discuss include virtue, Kantian, utilitarian, and care ethics.  We'll examine the different ways each framework can contribute to arriving at answers to ethical questions, noting strengths and weaknesses, with an eye to understanding how these theories might guide us in our own ethical decision making.

PHIL 322-01A:  Environmental Ethics
Charles Wright
What does it mean to have an ethical relationship with the Earth and its living systems?  The class starts with the question:  how did we get where we are?  "Where we are" is a condition where it is difficult for people living in the modern developed societies of the Western world even to imagine what it might mean to interact with the Earth and its living systems with moral concern and respect.  We will start the class by examining deep roots that the current failure of ethical recognition has in the philosophical and religious traditions that gave rise to the modern world.  Once we have considered these roots, we will turn to philosophical and religious efforts to reconceive the relation between humans and the other than human world.  The religious reflections of theologian Sally McFague, farmer and poet Wendell Berry, and his holiness Pope Francis will introduce us to contemporary religious perspectives on the right relation between humans and the Earth.  The writing of Aldo Leopold and indigenous activists will offer us philosophical reflections on the nature and possibility of ethical relations between humans and the other than human world.  Finally, we will consider the role consumer culture plays by encouraging us to maintain an exploitative and destructive relationship with the natural world.  Economist Juliet Schor will dissect for us the cultural and economic dynamics of consumer culture.  We will then finish with the memoir of a family living in the heart of New York City that tried to re-order their lives in a way respectful of the Earth.

PHIL 322-02A:  Environmental Ethics
Charles Wright
What does it mean to have an ethical relationship with the Earth and its living systems?  The class starts with the question:  how did we get where we are?  "Where we are" is a condition where it is difficult for people living in the modern developed societies of the Western world even to imagine what it might mean to interact with the Earth and its living systems with moral concern and respect.  We will start the class by examining deep roots that the current failure of ethical recognition has in the philosophical and religious traditions that gave rise to the modern world.  Once we have considered these roots, we will turn to philosophical and religious efforts to reconceive the relation between humans and the other than human world.  The religious reflections of theologian Sally McFague, farmer and poet Wendell Berry, and his holiness Pope Francis will introduce us to contemporary religious perspectives on the right relation between humans and the Earth.  The writing of Aldo Leopold and indigenous activists will offer us philosophical reflections on the nature and possibility of ethical relations between humans and the other than human world.  Finally, we will consider the role consumer culture plays by encouraging us to maintain an exploitative and destructive relationship with the natural world.  Economist Juliet Schor will dissect for us the cultural and economic dynamics of consumer culture.  We will then finish with the memoir of a family living in the heart of New York City that tried to re-order their lives in a way respectful of the Earth.

PHIL 325-01A:  Feminist Ethics
Jean Keller
The U.S.  women's movement is deeply indebted to the values of western liberalism.  The Declaration of Independence's assertion that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" provided feminists with the intellectual grounds to argue that women, too, should be equal, thereby allowing them to argue for and, after 70 years of struggle, to win the right to vote.  In the 1960s and 70s, the concept of equal rights fueled feminist activism with regard to a range of diverse issues-from ending gender segregated job ads, to eliminating quotas limiting the number of women who could go to college, ensuring that boys' and girls' sports received equal funding, and activism to ensure that men and women would receive equal pay for equal work.  Despite these and other ways in which the women's movement has been predicated on the concepts of equality, individual rights, autonomy, freedom, and fairness embedded in the justice tradition of western liberalism, in the past 30 years the field of feminist ethics has increasingly challenged the basic premises of this tradition.  Feminist ethicists have argued that the conceptual tools of this tradition fundamentally misunderstand key aspects of women's lives and experiences and are inadequate to bring about the conceptual and social changes necessary to eradicate the oppression of women.  While feminist ethics has been developed in many different directions, in this course our primary focus will be multiple variants of care ethics, tracing its development from a "women's" ethic of interpersonal relationships to a critical tool for examining global inequalities.