Descriptions for ETHS 390 - Fall 2019
ETHS 390-01A: Justice in the 21st Century
Daniel 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: Decemption & Manipulation
Scott Richardson
At times we feel justified in lying, even to those we love, and we regularly have no problem deceiving people, especially those to whom we have no attachment. Yet we also have an ingrained sense that the truth is the proper basis for human relationships and should be championed-except for situations when it shouldn't. Manipulation sounds repugnant, and we resent being the object of others' meddling and maneuvering, yet again we engage in this activity frequently and often consider it beneficial to those with whose lives we are fiddling.
This ethics seminar will use novels, plays, and a philosophical treatise to explore the morality of deception and manipulation at both the personal and political levels. We will look at the moral implications of different types of manipulation, ranging from simple deception to elaborate schemes designed by masterminds who reach a desired end by casting in a role someone who does not even realize that a play is being performed.
The reading will include John Fowles's The Magus, a spy novel or two by John le Carré, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, and plays by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, and Woody Allen.
ETHS 390-03A: Ethics of War: What do Ethics Mean during a Time of War?
Christi Siver
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: Cancelled
Christen Strollo Gordon
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.
ETHS 390-06A: TBA
Carol Brash
TBA
ETHS 390-07A: Reading for Life
Anthony Cunningham
Everyone loves a good story. Great stories can provide us with far more than mere recreation. Stories can provide us with rich character portraits that can reveal the subtleties and nuances of what it means to live well and responsibly. In this course we’ll use novels and films to address Socrates’ most basic ethical questions, “How should one live?” and “What sort of person should I be?” We’ll do so by attending to all the concrete, particular details of real life and fictional characters thoroughly embroiled in the “business of living.” Reading well offers the possibility of vicarious experience and ultimately, ethical insight. Our readings will include: The Crucible (Arthur Miller); The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro); Beloved (Toni Morrison); How To Be Good (Nick Hornby); Glengarry Glen Ross (David Mamet); Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier); A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Anthony Marra)
ETHS 390-08A: Nature, Democracy and Ethics
Staff
This course engages a multi-perspectival approach to the notion of “democracy,” especially as interpreted by and through the American tradition in philosophy and ethics. While democracy is typically understood as a form of government, we will explore (1) how democracy might be understood as a way of life, (2) how the fundamental dynamics of democracy are rooted in the natural world, (3) how democracy may provide regulative principles for ethical life, and (4) how a democratic mode of “relating” can provide a substantive philosophical basis for thinking about morality and existence.
ETHS 390-09A: Nature, Democracy and Ethics
Staff
This course engages a multi-perspectival approach to the notion of “democracy,” especially as interpreted by and through the American tradition in philosophy and ethics. While democracy is typically understood as a form of government, we will explore (1) how democracy might be understood as a way of life, (2) how the fundamental dynamics of democracy are rooted in the natural world, (3) how democracy may provide regulative principles for ethical life, and (4) how a democratic mode of “relating” can provide a substantive philosophical basis for thinking about morality and existence.
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.
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.
ETHS 390A-03A: Healthcare Ethics
Georgia Hogenson
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.
ETHS 390B-01A: Science Ethics
Christen Strollo Gordon
Cross-listed with CHEM 390
This course will explore the idea of an ethical scientific process and its effect on our society. Topics may include: air pollution, persistent pollutants, disposal of waste, vaccines, energy production, work hazards, factory farms (antibiotic resistance), pesticides, GMOs, geoengineering, climate change (water, land, and food access; infectious diseases; impact of extreme weather), and pharmaceutical industry practices. Students will apply current ethical philosophies to examine their own place in the scientific world through readings, discussion, and case studies. Prerequisite of MT & NS requirements and Junior or Senior standing.
HONR 390B-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.
PHIL 321-01A: Moral Philosophy
Erica Stonestreet
The meaning of rights and responsibilities, virtues and vices, values and obligations. Questions of good and evil, right and wrong, freedom and determinism. Natural law, utilitarianism and other systematic theories of morally right behavior.
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 324-01A: Business Ethics
Joseph DesJardins
This course will examine ethical and social issues associated with contemporary American business. Responsibilities of businesses to employees, consumers and the society at large will be considered. Questions of individual moral responsibility and questions of social justice and public policy will be addressed. Students will examine these issues from the point of view of a variety of stakeholders: business management, employees, investors, consumers, and citizens. Prerequisite: students are strongly encouraged to have taken at least one previous course in management, accounting, philosophy, or economics. Note: normally offered as ETHS 390, not as PHIL 324.
PHIL 325-01A: Feminist Ethics
Jean Keller
This course will examine how women's experiences and philosophical reflection on those experiences offer important and necessary perspectives in the field of moral and ethical thinking. Topics may include the nature of feminism, freedom and oppression; the role of care, trust, autonomy, reason and emotion in the moral life, and a consideration of how feminism has come to challenge basic premises and conceptual tools of traditional, western approaches to ethics and moral reasoning. The course will also explore social/ethical issues stemming from the intersection of gender with race, ethnicity, culture, class, and/or sexuality.