1. Is stealing always wrong?  Compare and contrast various schools of thought on the matter.  (Include Kohlberg and Gilligan.)
2. What are the pros and cons of each school of thought?
3. Who makes the rules about what’s right and wrong?  Who has the ultimate power to proscribe moral righteousness and who has the ultimate authority to institutionalize legal rights, rules, and restrictions?
4. If we are not acting freely, is it possible to consider actions either moral or immoral?  (Is it ever possible not to be acting freely?)  What do you think Kant would say?  What about Plato?
5. How are beliefs and values passed along from generation to generation?
6. What is the justification for any form of government?  By what right do the “powers that be” come to power?  By what authority do they decide what rules govern society?
7. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely?
8. Is it wise or advisable to rule through fear?  What would Plato say?  Hammurabi?  Machiavelli?
9. Is war ever ethical?  If not, why not?  If so, under what circumstances?
10. Whose rights, interests, and privileges should we safeguard more:  those of the one or the many/group?

• Plato’s student and teacher of Alexander the Great. 
• Aristotle loved to categorize things.
• In fact, he’s considered to be the greatest literary biologist of all time because his Poetics have been instrumental in defining the guidelines for literature.
• He wrote philosophical treatises on practically everything, and the term “metaphysics” is derived from the writings he did after he wrote about “physics,” or the nature of things in the material world.  (In Greek, meta (μετα) is a preposition that means “after”.) Of course, the word metaphysics has taken on much broader meaning since its inception.
• Believed that in order for our actions to be judged as moral or immoral, we must have a certain degree of health and wealth.
• Aristotle adopted a scientific, empirical approach to ethical problems.
• His primary work on ethics is called Nicomachean Ethics.
• How do we achieve happiness?
• The answer for Aristotle was to apply the “golden mean,” which, when applied to ethics rather than mathematics, means that in order to achieve happiness, we must act moderately, always striving for the harmonious balance between two extremes.
• Happiness, he argues, is not something static or stationary, but rather is an activity, a way of doing things.
• If one engages in the activities of life in a virtuous manner, then happiness accompanies these activities (though it should never be the goal of the activity).
• Happiness is the path taken on the journey to “the good live” and should not be confused with the destination itself.
• Moreover, what is good for one person may not be good for another, and without experimentation and trial and error, through the use of reason alone, one cannot determine what is best.

Aristotelianism
( http://www.ismbook.com)

[From the name of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE).]

(philosophy) "Aristotle was the first philosopher to create a more-or-less complete system of thought. In particular, he originated or gave renewed force to individualism, eudaimonism, optimism, realism, humanism, naturalism, and even to a certain extent political liberalism (in that he defended the importance of voluntary institutions and the rule of law). Unfortunately, because of the history of Aristotle's writings in the West (they disappeared for centuries only to be rediscovered again around 1200 CE at the height of the logicism of the Middle Ages), Aristotle often is blamed for the mistakes and views of his interpreters. Thus the popular conception of Aristotelianism is sometimes closer to neo-Platonism or especially scholasticism than anything Aristotle argued for in his writings. While it is true that Aristotle was something of a conservative (and was seriously wrong about some things, such as the intellectual powers and moral worth of women), his actual views on most topics are much more scientific and realistic than he is usually given credit for. In addition to his work in philosophy, Aristotle founded the science of logic and performed significant research in biology, political science, rhetoric, literary theory, and many other disciplines."

• To live pleasurably means that one must not suffer any undesirable effects from living in such a manner.
• If one engages in a life of pleasure that ultimately leads to some sort of pain, then such a life cannot be said to be pleasurable and thus is not “good.”
• dynamic pleasures such as lust, gluttony, fame, drunkenness, and marriage
• are all BAD by virtue of the fact that they are all accompanied by pain.
• better to avoid pain than to seek pleasure if it will produce pain. 
• passive pleasures such as friendship
• are good because they do not produce pain and suffering
• when people suffer great catastrophes, they instinctively seek pleasure as a means of comfort as well as a means of providing security in a collapsing world.

• Proposes that moral law requires that people be rewarded (not necessarily on earth, but rather in heaven) in direct proportion to their virtue.
• He identifies the “essence of morality” as being in the motive behind the act.  In other words, he gauges morality in terms of intention rather than consequence.  No matter what turns out to be the consequence of the action, it is moral if the person acting has good intentions.  He believes the path to reward in heaven (not the path to hell) is paved with good intentions.
• As a result, only voluntary actions (volition) can be described as being either moral or immoral.  If we were acting under duress, then our actions are simply amoral, outside of morality.
• categorical imperative:  states that everyone should act in a righteous manner as if each action were to become a universal law.

• contends that there is fundamentally one and only one good life for all to lead because goodness exists independently of human inclinations, desires, wishes, and opinions.  There exists an objective truth that is absolute and can only be found by training the intellect.
• Platonism and utilitarianism (see below) both presume objectivist viewpoints.
• Remember, Plato supposes that moral truths exist in the same sense as mathematical truths.  He also states that goodness is a moral fact.

• contends that there can be no absolute determination of morality based on some objective truth. 
• Truth is relative to the individual circumstances and can only be determined by taking into consideration the psychology and context of the person faced with the moral dilemma.
• A theory is subjectivist if it posits that ethical or moral judgments are neither true nor false or if it suggest that truth and falsity apply and can only be interpreted by each particular person.
• Thomas Hobbes’s moral theory is considered subjectivist because he believed that moral language was just another way to express desires, inclinations, feelings, etc.  In other words, a statement like “This is good” can be translated as “I desire this.”

• believes that we should only trust what we experience personally.
• empirical knowledge is knowledge that is measured by and filtered through the senses.

• comes from the Greek word for pleasure
• belief that pleasure alone is good and that all happiness is a function of pleasure.
• the hippie motto, “If it feels good, do it!” would be considered hedonistic.
• Epicureanism differs because it says that pain negates pleasure, whereas hedonism makes no such distinction.

• Catholic philosophy popular in Spain and France in the 17th century
  • submission to God & absorption into divine perfection through the absolute passivity of the soul and freeing oneself from individual desire and willful effort
• an eastern/Oriental ethical philosophy
  • advises us to accept and succumb to adversity
  • even though we suffer throughout our lives, our ethical duty is to make the best of things.
  • submersion in tranquility and meditation will help us achieve this goal
  • based on the idea that the physical world of the senses is an illusion and that truth and happiness transcend the material world.

• assumes that the world is fundamentally evil
• therefore, in order to live righteously, we must withdraw from participation in the world.
• must not let our possession of material goods determine whether or not we are happy, for if we do, we will be doomed to a state of constant striving and continual disappointment and dissatisfaction.
• True happiness can only be found in the virtue that resides within each of us.
• By rejecting material things, we are liberated from fear.
• Practitioners of cynicism live frugal, solitary lives shunning the world’s goods.

• proposes that in order to find true happiness, we must learn to be indifferent to external influences.
• if we can learn this indifference to external events, no matter how horrible (like slavery, torture, rape, imprisonment, etc.), then others will have no power over us in any significant way.
• virtue resides in the will; therefore, the exercise of free will alone determines what is good and what is evil.
• good life comes from being able to free oneself from desires and passions (stoicism shares this value with Hinduism and Buddhism)
• One’s essential character cannot be destroyed by external events in one’s life
• Virtue consists in a will that is in agreement with the happenings of nature in which all is part of a divine design that is unalterable.
• Stoics believe that all behavior is ultimately determined by natural laws, but without free will no one can be held responsible for their own actions.
• Responsibility for becoming good or bad resides with the individual and not with society at large.

• see Jeremy Bentham & John Stuart Mill
• proposes that an action is right as long as it tends to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
• This is a numbers game, pure and simple:  majority rules!
• In some ways, this is an offshoot of hedonism because it identifies happiness in terms of pleasure.
• separates the action and its consequence from the person who performs the action.  In other words, a child who burns the house down is not necessarily a bad child, but rather is a child who has done a bad thing.
• stresses the effects of actions rather than their motives (the opposite of Kant)
• If something has undesirable effects, it is wrong regardless of whether or not the person had good intentions.
• Because the “good” hinges on the happiness of the majority, utilitarianism is often associated with democracy.  On further contemplation, however, also consider how it might just as easily be associated with Hitler’s Germany.