A portfolio of written coursework (3 pieces of approximately 1000 words each) submitted at strategic points of the module. [Learning Outcomes 1-3]

This module centres on key questions in meta-ethics and normative ethics, and their relations to conceptions of the self or subjective agency. In doing so it attempts to develop in students an understanding of what is distinctive about moral thought and reasoning, to study key terms, arguments and forms of analysis, and to indicate reciprocal implications for philosophies of subjectivity.

The first part of the module considers meta-ethics: what is the nature of morality? Are some things or actions good in themselves, or are our moral claims no more than subjective expressions of our preferences or emotional attachments? The second, longer, part of the module surveys normative theories of ethics, including some or all of the following: Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Mill. The final part of the module considers several more recent European challenges to the key ideas of morality itself, such those challenges issued by Nietzsche, Sartre and Levinas.

Teaching and learning will be arranged around a weekly lecture and seminar. Lectures will serve to introduce principal issues and survey positions on them. Seminars will be devoted to close reading of selected short texts and the answering of specific questions on them.

Lecture and adequate seminar rooms.

Aristotle. (2000). Nicomachean Ethics. Trans., Irwin. Hackett.
Cooper, D. (ed). (1997). Ethics: The Classic Readings. Blackwell.
Kant, I. (2002). Critique of Practical Reason. Trans., Pluhar. Hackett.
LaFollette, H (ed) (2000) Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, Blackwell.
Nietzsche, F (2005). Twilight of the Idols. Ed., Ridley. Trans., Norman. Cambridge