Have any of you read anything ethicsy lately?

[owl_of_minerva]

I'm working on my syllabus for a sophomore course on ethics; it's a required core course for all students at my university. Everyone will have already had one course on philosophy. I'm going to start the class with two weeks of one-shot classes on various themes: a day on medical ethics (I'm using an article on the problems with research on human subjects), a day on animal rights (thanks to epistolarysmack and theoryishotcrew, I'm probably going to use the Nozick piece on "Constraints and Animals"), a day on business ethics, and a day on pacifism/violence. Something like that, anyway. These two weeks will set up general questions about what philosophical ethics tries to achieve, and students will begin tentatively working on a paper project that they will develop over the course of the semester.

I'm still hunting around for articles, as you can see, for the last two... I'm also open to changing the themes. Peter Singer's piece in the NY Times last month about charitable giving might be a likely prospect, also. The articles should be accessible -- the type of thing that comes up in the NY Times magazine, for instance, is right about perfect.

So -- have any of you read anything neat and roughly ethicsy lately that you think might appeal to 19-20 year olds who are being forced to take my course? It could even be something provocatively denying the possibility of ethics -- i.e., realpolitik in humanitarianism or something. Any recommendations are good.

Comments

[owl-of-minerva.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Sofian -- good suggestions. Not having tracked down the Churchill essay yet -- would it catch students who may have no prior knowledge of some of the debates involved?

And I will point out that there is a noticeable difference between 'just war theory' and the type of 'preventative war' justification that went on for Iraq. I don't know any just war theorists who thought that Iraq qualified -- and in fact, some argue that the criteria involved in just war theory are so high that no war would ever even really qualify.

[sofiandos.livejournal.com]

Churchill caught me - at a time when I was very poorly read in the subject - but perhaps more interested than is typical. I was certainly not a reader, though, as far as theory was concerned. Pacifism as Pathology is a long read, though.

I think Churchill is at U of Colorado right now - and I've found the essay at AKpress (http://www.akpress.org/1998/items/pacifismaspathology) and on amazon.

Thanks for the just war straightening out. It's a phrase that has been mentioned from time to time and I mistakenly associated it with the rhetoric associated with the wars undertaken by the Bush administration.

[owl-of-minerva.livejournal.com]

Yes - he is still at U Colorado Boulder -- most of my knowledge of him was re. the flareup about his article & the debate about whether the school could/should fire him, tenure or no tenure. Fun! It will be cool to look through this piece.

Just war theory has a reasonably respectable pedigree, despite the fact that hardcore pacifists (like John Dear and Daniel Berrigan, both Jesuits) see it as excuse-making. Since it's part of Catholic social thought and I'm at a Jesuit university, I hear a fair amount of debate about its merits and defects.

Here's the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on just war theory (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/#2).

[sofiandos.livejournal.com]

Shit. You've made my day, Jane.

Heh. I wonder what people thought about before the Greeks.

[owl-of-minerva.livejournal.com]

Mmmm... just cave theory? ;)