Ethics: A History of Moral Thought

This course addresses some of the eternal questions that man has grappled with since the beginning of time. What is good? What is bad? Why is justice important? Why is it better to be good and just than it is to be bad and unjust? Most human beings have the faculty to discern between right and wrong, good and bad behavior, and to make judgments over what is just and what is unjust. But why are ethics important to us? This course looks at our history as ethical beings. We'll travel into the very heart of mankind's greatest philosophical dilemmas-to the origins of our moral values and the problem of ethics. Are ethics universal, absolute and unchanging-or are they culturally relative, changing, and man-made? Furthermore, we'll delve into the creation of ethical systems-not just for ourselves, but also for society at large. And we will consider the ongoing process of establishing ethical frameworks for society.