Home Study
Ethics is the study of right or good action. How do we know what is right, what is moral, what is just? What is happiness? How do we attain it? How can we deserve it? Many different answers have been given to these questions. This course will take a broad historical survey of some of the more challenging answers to these questions.

This course is offered in Presession and can be completed in that time, but students may elect to take an extension lasting until the end of the summer. The course will require you to study the listed texts, write three 5-8 page papers on specified topics, which must be mailed to me by specific dates, and to write a final examination (no later than the end of the first week of the fall term). I have provided introductions and study guides for each of the authors concerned. These study guides will ask you to read the text, analyze it, and answer specific questions. You will then submit essays on issues arising out of this study. I have also provided guidelines on how to write your essays.

The final exam will be comprehensive. The regular time for the exam is the last day of Presession, but for those taking the extended deadlines the exam may also be taken by special arrangement at any time up to the end of the first week of the Fall term.

The study guides may be picked up in the Philosophy Department office in late April.

This course has the prerequisite of PHIL 110 GE: Introduction to Philosophy. This prerequisite may be waived in certain cases with the permission of the instructor. Contact Professor Weatherston for more details: (570) 422-3603 or mweather@po-box.esu.edu

TEXTS:

• Plato, Gorgias, trans. Walter Hamilton & Chris Emlyn-Jones, Penguin Books
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin, Hackett Publishers
• St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas on Ethics and Politics, ed. Paul E. Sigmund, W. W. Norton & Co
• Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James Ellington, Hackett Publishers
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Hackett Publishers
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books

GRADING:

• 3 papers, 1250-2000 words each: 20% each
• 1 final comprehensive exam (40%)

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:
East Stroudsburg University demands academic integrity from its students. Any form of academic dishonesty, including (but not limited to) plagiarism or cheating at tests or exams, is a sufficient ground for failure in this course and for further academic discipline.