A number of court cases, including Supreme Court cases, will be studied and discussed in terms of practice. At stake here will be such topics as freedom of expression, privacy, religious freedom, pornography, hate speech, affirmative action. This course is designed as an introduction to the history of ethical reflection, focussed primarily on the Western Judaeo-Christian tradition. In the second half of the course we will look at several contemporary moral issues, using the theory to inform our reflection on these issues. This course is a service-learning course.
All students participate in a weekly community service project at one of several pre-selected sites.
These projects include tutoring, working at a shelter, and working at a soup kitchen. In this course we will look at classical and contemporary approaches to issues such as social justice, human rights, citizenship, and community responsibility. In tandem with the three hours of course work will be a fourth hour dedicated to small group reflection on people's service experience, particularly as that experience may challenge the self-perception and cultural biases of students. Through the varied lenses of moral psychology, theology, philosophy, public affairs we will learn some traditional approaches to ethics and examine how and why these approaches have been modified and appropriated by contemporary thinkers to apply to contemporary life. We will be especially concerned with the moral content of our relationships - professional, social, familial, romantic, and political.