philosophy.lander.edu

Tutorial notes for

Introduction to Ethical Studies: An Open Source Reader version 0.11

The book is available as PDF, HTML, --accessible from the Ethics Homepage .

Lecture Notes and Answers to Questions for the open source document as a work in progress released here in draft form.

The collaborators would be grateful for corrections or other suggestions to this preliminary draft.  Please address comments to

philbook@philosophy.lander.edu 

The current CVS Repository for this work and the tarball are available.

Part I  The Nature of Ethical Inquiry

• Hubbard Winslow, "Conscience Determines What's Right"

• Alexander Bain, "Conscience is Learned"

• G. W. Foote, 'It Doesn't Pay to be Religious"

• Charles A. Ellwood, "Ethics are Culturally Relative"

• Edward Westermarck, "Ethics are Relative"

• G. E. Moore, "The Objectivity of Moral Judgments"

Part II Free Will and Determinism 

• Some Varieties of Determinism

• August Comte, "Positive Philosophy"

• Frederick Engels, "Science of Natural Processes"

• John Stuart Mill, "A Science of Human Nature"

• John Venn, "Statistics as Applied to Human Action"

• Baruch Spinoza, "Human Beings are Determined"

• William James, "The Will to Believe"

Part III Religious and Duty Ethics

• Blaise Pascal, "The Wager"

• Ohiyesa, "The Soul of an Indian"

• Immanuel Kant, "Act in Accordance with Universal Law"

• Soren Kierkegaard, "Truth is Faith"

Part IV The Search for Happiness

• Plato, "The Socratic Paradox"

• Epicurus, "Pleasure is the Good"

• Epictetus, "We Should Value What's in Our Control"

• David Hume, "Egoism Is Mistaken"

• Aristotle, "What is the Life of Excellence?"

Part V Ethics and Society

• Plato, "The Ring of Gyges"

• Bernard Mandeville, "Human Beings Are Always Selfish"

• Jeremy Bentham, "Happiness is the Greatest Good"

• Friedrich Nietzsche, "Slave and Master Morality"

• William James, "What Makes a Life Significant?"