BASS Politics and Sociology

What is wrong with breaking a promise, telling a lie, or performing surgery on someone without their consent? Is there value to having a systematic moral theory? If so, how does such theorizing work? And which of the various moral theories on offer—such as consequentialism, contractualism, Kantian deontology, and virtue ethics—is correct? By addressing questions such as these, this course will enable students to explore a range of issues in contemporary moral philosophy. The specific topics covered will vary from year to year, but may include goodness, virtue, reasons, blame, consent, promises, lies, group responsibility, consequentialism, Kantian ethics, contractualism, theory and anti-theory, and pluralism.

The unit aims to:

• Guide students' development in thinking philosophically about ethics;
• Familiarise students with some important writings in contemporary philosophical ethics;
• Enhance students' ability to present and discuss philosophical issues orally, and their ability to present philosophical ideas and arguments in written work.

One two-hour lecture and one one-hour tutorial per week.

Students should be able to:

• Identify and explain contemporary philosophical views about moral obligation;
• Explain the major theories of Western normative ethics, and what is at stake in debates about those theories.

Students should be able to:

• Appraise contemporary philosophical views about moral obligation;
• Compare and evaluate the major theories of Western normative ethics.

Students should be able to:

• Construct clearly written responses to questions;
• Gather and synthesise material from various sources (e.g. online resources and library resources) in preparing for assessments on ethical topics.

Essay (2000 words) 33%

Exam (2 hours) 67%

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate time is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main forms of feedback on this course are written feedback responses to assessed essays and exam answers.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question on the discussion board on Canvas; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

• Kraut, Richard (2007). What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press.
• Nussbaum, Martha (2000). “Why Practice Needs Ethical Theory: Particularism, Principle and Bad Behavior.” In B. Hooker and M. O. Little (eds.), Moral Particularism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 227-255.
• Rachels, James (various editions: later editions by Rachels, Stuart) The Elements of Moral Philosophy McGraw-Hill  
• Scanlon, T.M. (1982) “Contractualism and Utilitarianism.” In A. Sen and B. Williams (eds.), Utilitarianism and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 103-128.
• Witt, Charlotte (2023) Social Goodness: The Ontology of Social Norms Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2027 will be £10,050 per annum. Tuition fees for international students will be £29,200 per annum.

For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

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