Summer 2013 Ethics Syllabus

Syllabus

Goals of the Course

1. To understand, use, and critically evaluate standard ethical theories such as deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics, as well as theories of justice, race, and ethnography.
2. To review and consider a variety of contemporary meta-ethical theories such as evolutionary ethics, moral psychology, and game theory, as well as contemporary theory of culture.
3. To develop your own view of the nature of ethics and a model for ethical analysis and decision-making.
4. To develop a view of the causes, consequences, and remedies for absolute poverty, as well as our moral obligation to provide international relief and development aid.
5. To develop a view of the causes and consequences of racial and ethnic difference and cultural dynamics that allowed historic slavery, as well as contemporary cases of child labor and slave labor. To develop critical skills for assessing human group behaviors and structure that promote group difference.

Course Description

This introductory ethics course surveys traditional ethical theories using both primary and secondary philosophical literature, and surveys major contemporary research in moral psychology, evolutionary ethics, and the application of game theory to ethics.

In this Benin version of the course, which seeks to address social justice, the focus will fall on understanding the social injustices perpetuated by political difference, relgious difference, the historic Atlantic slave trade, and underdevelopment. While we develop theoretical resources for addressing all four topics, our emphasis falls on slavery and the ethics of development.

Throughout the course we consider applied ethical problems, culminating in a focus on ethical issues in international aid and development. For theoretical background, we read selections from Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Rawls, as well as contemporary writers such as Franz de Waal (Primates and Philosophers), Jonathan Haidt, and Daniel Dennett. For development ethics we will read essays by Peter Singer and his critics, some virtue ethics, and contemporary critics and advocates of international aid, such as Sachs, Easterly, and Moyo.

Schedule

During the online portion of the course, which covers the first four weeks of Summer Session 2, students read and discuss online the following kinds of readings:

• standard readings in ethical theory, such as virture ethics, deonotology, utility theory, as well as contemporary theories of justice.
• readings related to understanding the historic Atantic slave trade, child migration and labor, and contemporary examples of slave labor.
• readings on our obligations to aid, the effectiveness of aid, the problems of development in Benin.

During the in-country portion of the course, students will engage in service, research, and cultural travel which develops their understanding of social justice issues in the following ways:

• students will experience the Songhai Center and its approach to development and interact with staff and interns.
• students will visit historic and cultural sites related to the Atlantic slave trade including the Dahomey Palace grounds, UNESCO Point of No Return monument and related sites
• students will visit a village level development project, and learn about numerous development projects and initiatives in Benin.
• students will amplify their reading knoweldge of the effects of absoluate poverty with more direct knowledge of the causes and consequences of endemic absolute poverty. This will take place through discussion with Beninoise contacts and narratives of life in Benin.

Assessment

Students will be assessed on their achievement of the course goals through the following methods:

• 25% Journal Assignments
• 25% Readings Test
• 20% Critical Analysis Social Justice Paper
• 30% Final project on Social Justice