Yuuki Ohta / yuuki.ohta@philosophy.ox.ac.

uk

Sample course syllabus

Ethics before and after morality

(Last updated: 9 June 2014)

General description

This course is an introduction to some major themes in metaethics. Metaethics, in the

context of this course, is centrally a critical reflective attempt to make sense of
normative ethics, which in turn can be understood as an attempt to offer some
general, theoretical account of our ethical thought, talk, and action. Normative
ethics has traditionally taken, and today still typically takes, the form of a
philosophical enquiry into morality. What we shall scrutinise in this course is
the nature and the possibility of such an enquiry, or as I shall call it, moral
philosophy.

The course is divided into three major parts. The first concerns the preconditions of
moral philosophy, revealing some of the often implicit assumptions moral
philosophy standardly makes on various issues in the philosophy of mind and
action as well as in philosophical biology and anthropology. The second
concerns the limits of moral philosophy, focusing especially on the question:
What kind of objectivity can moral philosophy legitimately aspire to? The third
concerns the authority of moral philosophy, examining how the domain of the
moral is related to others, such as the personal, the ethical, and the human.

The closing topic of the course is the meaning of life and the place of philosophy
therein. While this is in some sense the ultimate topic of ethics, in discussing it
we shall gather together a number of metaethical themes from the earlier parts
of the course.

Each of the ten topics has three target readings. The first is a contemporary locus
classicus on the topic. The second is sometimes a critical response or a
supplement to the first, and other times a piece showing a contrasting approach
to the first. The third is a historical piece taken from the canon of Western
philosophy. The three readings together should put the topic in a rich
perspective.

The course as a whole is intended as an introduction (and an invitation), and

presupposes no prior knowledge of the subject. It should be noted that the
boundary between ethics and metaethics is blurry. Consequently, some key
issues often discussed in normative ethics are included in this course (e.g.
virtues, luck, the meaning of life), while some key issues often discussed in a
metaethics course are excluded (e.g. various forms of non-cognitivism, robust
realism, relativism, error theory). The subject matter of this course is best
described, I think, as what needs reflecting on prior to moral philosophy, and
beyond its limits. Hence the course title.

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 Yuuki Ohta / yuuki.ohta@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Overview

I. The preconditions of moral philosophy

1. Reasons and reasoning
2. Action and psychology
3. Goodness, happiness, virtues

II. The limits of moral philosophy

4. Objectivity: values and secondary qualities
5. Objectivity: thick concepts
6. The ambition of theory: science, ethics, and history

III. The authority of moral philosophy

7. Morality, emotions and the self
8. Moral luck and tragic responsibility
9. The moral, the ethical, and the human

10. The meaning of life and the place of philosophy therein

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Individual topics with readings

0. General background

Darwarll, Stephen, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton. Toward Fin de sicle
Ethics: Some Trends, in their Moral Discourse and Practice: Some
Philosophical Approaches (Oxford, 1997).
Mackie, J. L. Ethics: Inventing the right and wrong (Penguin, 1977).
Miller, Alexander. An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics (2nd ed. Polity,
2013).
Williams, Bernard. Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. (Cambridge, 1993).

I. The preconditions of moral philosophy

1. Reason and reasoning

Williams, Bernard. Internal and External Reasons, in his Moral Luck:

Philosophical Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge, 1981).
Korsgaard, Christine M. Skepticism about Practical Reason, in her Creating
the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge, 1996).
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Bk.2, Pt.3, Sec.3.

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Finlay, Stephen. The Obscurity of Internal Reasons, Philosophers Imprint 9:7
(2009), 122.
McDowell, John. 1995. Might There Be External Reasons? in his Mind, Value
and Reality (Harvard, 1998).
Scanlon, T. M. Appendix. Williams on Internal and External Reasons, in his
What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, 1998).
Williams, Bernard. Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame, in his
Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers 1982-1993
(Cambridge, 1995).
. 1995. Replies. in World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical
Philosophy of Bernard Williams (eds. J. E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison;
Cambridge, 1995).

2. Action and psychology

Anscombe, G. E. M. Modern Moral Philosophy, in her Collected

Philosophical Papers Vol. 3: Ethics, Religion and Politics (Blackwell,
1981).
Alvarez, Maria, and Aaron Ridley. The Concept of Moral Obligation:
Anscombe Contra Korsgaard, Philosophy 82 (2007), 54352.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Ia-IIe, qq.18-20.

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Anscombe, G. E. M. Action, Intention, and Double Effect, in her Human

Life, Action, and Ethics. Essays by G. E. M. Anscombe (Mary Geach and
Luke Gormally, eds.; Imprint Academic, 2005).
Diamond, Cora. Consequentialism in Modern Moral Philosophy and in
Modern Moral Philosophy, in Human Lives. Critical Essays on
Consequentialist Bioethics (eds. David S. Oderberg and Jacqueline A.
Laing; Macmillan, 1997).
OHear, Anthony, ed. Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, 2000). Pieces by
Foot, Thompson, Crisp, Lovibond, and ONeill.
Vogler, Candace. Modern Moral Philosophy Again: Isolating the Promulgation
Problem, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (2006), 34764.

3. Goodness, happiness, virtues

Foot, Philippa. Natural Goodness (Clarendon, 2001), Chs. 1-3.

Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of the Good Over Other Concepts, in her
Sovereignty of the Good (Routledge, 2001).
Plato, Republic. Bk. 6, 502c8-521b11.

---
Crisp, Roger. Reasons and the Good (Clarendon, 2006). Ch. 4.
Hursthouse, Rosalind, Gavin Lawrence and Warren Quinn, eds. Virtues and
Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory (Oxford, 1995). Pieces by
McDowell, Quinn, and Thompson.
Setiya, Kieran. Murdoch on the Sovereignty of Good, Philosophers Imprint
13:9 (2013), 1-21.
Thompson, Michael. Three Degrees of Natural Goodness. (Discussion note,
Iride). Online. http://philpapers.org/rec/THOTDO-4

II. The limits of moral philosophy

4. Objectivity: values and secondary qualities

McDowell, John. Values and Secondary Qualities, in his Mind, Value and
Reality (Harvard, 1998).
Wright, Crispin. Moral Values, Projection and Secondary Qualities, in his
Saving the Differences: Essays on Themes from Truth and Objectivity
(Harvard, 2003).
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bk. 2, Ch. 8.

---
Blackburn, Simon. Essays in Quasi-Realism (Oxford, 1993). Chs. 1, 6, 8, and 9.
Haldane, John, and Crispin Wright, eds. Reality, Representation, and Projection
(Oxford, 1993). Part IV.
Hooker, Brad, ed. Truth in Ethics. (Oxford, 1996). Esp. pieces by Wright,
Williams, and Wiggins.

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McDowell, John. Aesthetic Value, Objectivity, and the Fabric of the World, in
his Mind, Value and Reality (Harvard, 1998).
Wiggins, David. A Sensible Subjectivism? in his Needs, Values, Truth: Essays
in the Philosophy of Value (3rd ed.; Clarendon, 2002).

5. Objectivity: thick concepts

Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Routledge, 2006), Ch.
8.
Gibbard, Allan and Simon Blackburn. Morality and Thick Concepts,
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 66
(1992), 267-99.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Ak. 4: 399-402,
419-24.

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Kirchin, Simon, ed. Thick Concepts (Oxford, 2013).
Moore, A. W. Maxims and thick concepts, Ratio (new series) 19: 2 (2006),
129-47.
. Can reflection destroy knowledge? Ratio (new series) 4: 2 (1991),
97-107.
Roberts, Debbie. Thick Concepts, Philosophy Compass 8: 8 (2013), 677-88.
Scheffler, Samuel. Morality Through Thick and Thin: a Critical Notice of
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, The Philosophical Review, 96: 3
(1987), 411-34.

6. The ambition of theory: science, ethics, and history

Putnam, Hilary. Objectivity and the Science/Ethics Distinction, in his Realism

with a Human Face (James Conant, ed.,; Harvard, 1990).
Flanagan, Owen, Hagop Sarkissian, and David Wong. Naturalizing Ethics in
Moral Psychology. Volume 1: The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations
and Innateness (ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong; MIT, 2008).
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil, Pt. 5 Natural History of
Morals (186-203), and On the Genealogy of Morals, Preface.

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MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue (3rd ed.; Notre Dame, 2007). Chs. 1 and 15.
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters (2 volumes; Oxford, 2011). Chs. 27 and 30.
Railton, Peter. Aesthetic Value, Moral Value, and the Ambitions of
Naturalism, in his Facts, Values, and Norms: Essays toward a Morality
of Consequence (Cambridge, 2003).
Williams, Bernard. The point of view of the universe: Sidgwick and the
ambitions of ethics, in his Making Sense of Humanity: and other
philosophical papers 1982-1993 (Cambridge, 1995).

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III. The authority of moral philosophy

7. Morality, emotions and the self

Frankfurt, Harry. The Importance of what we care about, in his Importance

of what we care about (Cambridge, 1998).
Stocker, Michael. The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,Journal of
Philosophy 73:14 (1976), 453-466.
Epictetus, Handbook (Enchiridion) (Nicholas White, tr.; Hackett, 1983).

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Frankfurt, Harry. The Reasons of Love (Princeton, 2004).
Lovibond, Sabina. Ethical Formation (Harvard, 2002), Pt. II.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity
(Harvard, 1989), Pt. 1.
Velleman, J. David. Love as a Moral Emotion, in his Self to Self: Selected
Essays (Cambridge, 2006).
Williams, Bernard. Morality and the Emotions, in his Problems of the Self
(Cambridge, 1973).

8. Moral luck and tragic responsibility

Nussbaum,Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. Luck and Ethics in Greek

Tragedy and Philosophy (Updated ed.; Cambridge, 2002), Ch. 11.
Nagel, Thomas Moral Luck in his Mortal Questions (Cambridge, 1979).
Spinoza. Ethics. Pt. 5.

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Cavell, Stanley. The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear, in his Must
We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays (updated ed.; Cambridge,
2003).
Moore, A. W. A Kantian View or Moral Luck, Philosophy 65: 253 (1990),
297-321.
Murdoch, Iris. Comic and Tragic, in her Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals
(Chatto & Windus, 1992).
Strawson, P. F. Freedom and Resentment, in his Freedom and Resentment and
Other Essays (Routledge, 2008).
Wallace, R. Jay. Justification, Regret, and Moral Complaint: Looking Forward
and Looking Backward on (and in) Human Life in Luck, Value, and
Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams (eds. Ulrike
Heuer and Gerald Lang; Oxford, 2012)
Williams, Bernard. Moral Luck in his Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers
1973-1980 (Cambridge, 1981).

9. The moral, the ethical, and the human

Wolf, Susan. Moral Saints, Journal of Philosophy 79:8 (1982), 419-439.

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Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Routledge, 2006), Ch.
10.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. 1, Chs. 1-3, and Politics, Bk. 7, Chs. 1-3.

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Altham, J. E. J. and Ross Harrison, eds. World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the
Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams (Cambridge, 1995). Pieces by
Nussbaum and Taylor, and Williamss reply to them.
Diamond, Cora. Having a rough story about what moral philosophy is,in her
Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind (MIT, 1995).
Dworkin, Gerald. Theory, Practice, and Moral Reasoning, in The Oxford
Handbook of Ethical Theory (ed. David Copp; Oxford, 2006).
Parfit, Derek. What makes someones life go best, in his Reasons and Persons
(Clarendon, 1984).

10. The meaning of life and the place of philosophy therein

Wiggins, David. Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life, in his Needs,
Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value (3rd ed.; Clarendon,
2002).
Nozick, Robert. Philosophical Explanations (Harvard, 1981), Ch. 6 (up to p.
610).
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. A Lecture on Ethics, The Philosophical Review 74: 1
(1965), 3-12.

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Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus, in his Myth of Sisyphus (Penguin,
1976).
Hare, R. M. Nothing Matters, in his Applications of Moral Philosophy
(Macmillan, 1972).
Montaigne, Michel de. Essays, Bk. 1, Ch. 20 To philosophize is to learn how to
die.
Nagel, Thomas. The View From Nowhere (Oxford, 1986). Ch. 11.
Williams, Bernard. Persons, Character, Morality, in his Moral Luck:
Philosophical Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge, 1981).