BASS Social Anthropology and Criminology

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.