Calendar. The assignments below are approximate and tentative. Often a reading-guide handout will specify the details of an assignment, and it may include passages that are part of your assignment. (The two parts of Ethical Philosophy, the edition of Kant’s ethical writings we will use, have separate pagination; they’re indicated in the calendar as ‘EG’ and ‘EM’, respectively.)
| 8/26 | introduction | |
| 8/31 | Plato | Protagoras, 309a-324d (reading guide, Jowett trns) |
| 9/2 | wrtng due 9/3 |
Protagoras, 324d-338e (rdng gd, Jowett trns) |
| 9/7 | Protagoras, 338e-351a (rdng gd, Jowett trns) | |
| 9/9 | Protagoras, 351b-362 (rdng gd, Jowett trns) | |
| 9/14 | Aristotle | Nicomachean Ethics (NE), bk. i, chs. 1-12 |
| 9/16 | NE, bk. i, ch. 13; bk. ii | |
| 9/21 | (paper 1) | NE, bk. iii, chs. 1-5; bk. vi, chs. 1-2, 5, 7-9, 11-13 |
| 9/23 | NE, bk. iii, chs. 10-12; bk. vii, chs. 1-10 | |
| 9/28 | NE, bk. viii, chs. 1-3, 12-14; bk. ix, chs. 4, 8-9 | |
9/30 |
NE, bk. x, chs. 4-9 | |
| 10/5 | Mengzi | sels. from intro. and bks. 1A-2B, 4A-4B, 5B (see the reading guide for details) |
| 10/7 | sels. from bks. 6A-7B (see the reading guide for details) | |
| 10/12 | sels. from bks. 2B-5B, 6B-7B (see the reading guide for details) | |
| midsemester break | ||
| 10/19 | Kant | Grounding for the Meta. of Morals, intro. & sect. I (EG 1-17)—rdng gd |
| 10/21 | (paper 2) | Grounding, sect. II (EG 19-32)—rdng gd |
| 10/26 | Grounding, sect. II (EG 32-48)—rdng gd | |
| 10/28 | Grounding, sect. III, sels. (EG 49f, 54f, 61f); Meta. of Morals, gen. intro. I, III (EM 9-13, 17-20); Meta. Prin. Right, intro., §§A-E (handout); Meta. Prin. Virtue (MPV) intro., VI-IX, (EM 47-55)—rdng gd | |
| 11/2 | “On a Supposed Right to Lie” (EM 162-6); MPV, §§6-12 (EM 82-100)—rdng gd | |
| 11/4 | MPV, §§29-35, 41-4, 46-8 (EM 116-22, 130-3, 135-141)—rdng gd | |
| 11/9 | Mill | Utilitarianism, chs. 1-2 |
| 11/11 | Utilitarianism, chs. 3-4 | |
| 11/16 | Utilitarianism, ch. 5 | |
| 11/18 | Nagel | “Ethics,” lect. III of “The Limits of Objectivity” (pdf available at the Tanner lectures site) |
| Thanksgiving break | ||
| 11/30 | Sartre | Existentialism is a Humanism, pp. 17-39 |
| 12/2 | (paper 3) | Existentialism, pp. 39-72 |
| 12/7 | Baier | “Trust and Antitrust,” pp. 231-47 (on JSTOR at 2381376) |
| 12/9 | “Trust and Antitrust,” pp. 247-60 (on JSTOR at 2381376) | |
| 12/16 | exam | TH 1:30 |