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PROFESSOR: So what I want to
do in today's lecture is to
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shift gears somewhat from what
we've been talking about in
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the first unit of the course.
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As you know, the first unit of
the course was focused on a
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set of texts that we're
concerned with what is
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involved in human flourishing.
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And though our opening text,
Glaucon's challenge from
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Plato's Republic concerned
itself with morality and the
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way in which morality
contributes to human
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flourishing, we haven't, up
until this point, given much
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attention to what philosophers
have had to say about the
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nature of morality.
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And so goal in this unit is, in
an incredibly accelerated
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fashion, to introduce you today
and next Tuesday to two
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of the most prominent moral
theories in the Western
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tradition and then it then the
remaining sessions before
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March break to talk to you about
some of the empirical
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research about these
questions.
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And I know we have
a wide range of
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backgrounds in this class.
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Some of you are now taking your
first philosophy course.
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Some of you have taken an
entire course on ethics.
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And so I've tried to pitch the
lecture in such a way that it
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brings everybody up to speed,
but that it does so in a way
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that I hope won't bore those
of you who have encountered
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In particular, to make up for
the fact that there's very
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little empirical psychology
in this lecture I have six
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So those will come in in the
middle of the lecture right
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when all of you are zoning out
because you got two hours of
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sleep last night.
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So even if you don't pay
attention for the first part,
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you'll get to vote
in the middle.
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All right, so what
is it that moral
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philosophy sets out to do?
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What is it to provide a
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philosophical account of morality?
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What moral philosophy is the
systematic endeavor to
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understand moral concepts and
to justify moral principles
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That is: moral philosophy, even
if it ends up giving a
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non-systematic answer to how it
is that morality works and
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what it is that morality does,
does so within the endeavor of
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thinking systematically about
the nature of morality.
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What do I mean by morality?
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I mean that moral theories aim
to provide accounts of terms
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like "right" and "wrong,"
"permissible" and
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"impermissible," "ought" and
"ought not," "forbidden,"
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"good," "bad," and the like--and
to provide an
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