What does a good life look like? Which actions are right?

Those are the basic questions that ethicists have been asking for thousands of years. But let’s be honest: it isn’t just the ethicists asking these questions. We ALL ask them at some time or another. And more than likely, we’ve sometimes been stumped when trying to figure them out.

Today, we’ll be introducing the most influential ways that ethicists have sought to answer questions about living a good life. But we won’t stop there. In class, we’ll be evaluating (and even criticizing) the answers ethicists have given about living a good life. And then, for the rest of the semester, we’ll be using their frameworks to navigate tricky ethical questions about a wide variety of issues.

Philosophy Content

Before diving into your philosophy content for the day, you’ll be reading your first piece of science fiction for the class (!!!). It is a classic piece by Ursula Le Guin: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

After you’ve read Le Guin’s story, you can turn to the philosophy reading for the day. We’ll start with Immanuel Kant. Kant has been hugely important and influential to the way all of us think about ethics today, even if you have never heard of him. Kant is a notoriously difficult philosopher to read. Rather than having you read Kant himself, we’ll let Hank walk you through his way of thinking about ethics. View the video below for a crash course on Kant.

After you have finished the video, please read Utilitarianism, by John Stuart Mill. A few notes before you dive in: first, note that this is philosophy, and philosophy can be difficult to read. So if you don’t understanding everything the first time through, don’t worry—we’re not expecting you to understand everything. Second, note that this is an ‘interactive reading,’ a reading that includes dropdowns, etc. Not all of your readings will be interactive, but some of them will be.