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]

Very neat. One of my good friends in grad school is doing her phd in applied developmental psych, focusing on existential phenomenological psych -- she frequently sits in on philosophy classes, and we talk psych vs. phil all the time. Sometimes I I tease her about it ("why don't you just come to the dark side of philosophy!") but she seems to like the psychological viewpoint.

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's impressive. Both that she's studying that and that there's a place one can study that. :)

[owl-of-minerva.livejournal.com]

Well, she was excited about it coming in, but she found out when she got here that it's not necessarily something the whole department is thrilled about, so she's faced some obstacles. Things seem to be getting better, though -- they're even letting her organize a conference (on qualitative psych in general, if I recall correctly, not just existential phenomenological).

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

They must be impressed with her, if not with the conventionality of her interests. :)

We had a big Merleau-Ponty conference here a year or so ago (but of course just for phil, not psych).