PHIL 201 Ethics I

Spring 2023

Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Fulden İbrahimhakkıoğlu

Email: fulden@metu.edu.tr

Office Hours: Tuesdays 1:30-2:30 & Wednesdays 4:30-5:30

Course Assistant: Berk Yaylım byaylim@metu.edu.tr

Class Meetings:
Tuesdays 10:40-13:30 YP-D204 & Zoom (we won’t always meet on Thursdays between 10:40-11:30, look
out for announcements in class)

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/99532950362?pwd=cVUxc3padzBMYTgzMkpEdXNnSVczUT09

Meeting ID: 995 3295 0362
Passcode: 355026

Course Description
This course offers an introductory survey to various ethical theories within the history of
western philosophy, including virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, social contract theory,
care ethics, and existentialist ethics. Bringing these ethical frameworks to bear on contemporary
ethical issues, this course seeks to combine theoretical and applied approaches to ethics.
Beginning with the question of “the good life,” we shall ask: Why live ethically? And how to live
ethically? Tracing how each philosopher with whom we engage responds to these questions, the
students are expected to develop an understanding of different kinds of ethical reasoning, which
in turn would enable them to analyze issues and propose an informed, intelligent response. As
their final project, the students will write a paper in which they take up a specific ethical problem
(e.g. capital punishment, euthanasia, incarceration, animal liberation, suicide, sex
work/prostitution, torture, hunger strike, pornography, etc.) and argue for a position by utilizing
and building on the kinds of ethical reasoning we traced and scrutinized throughout the semester.
All readings may be found on odtuclass.metu.edu.tr. The students must attend class
having done the assigned readings for the day and ready for discussion.

Grading Components
Midterm 30%
10 Reflections (around 500 words each) 20% (to be posted on the forum by 23:59 on Mondays)
Argumentative Paper 50% (1200-1500 words, due on finals week)

W1: Introduction to Ethics

Le Guinn, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
Plato, Crito
Recommended: Socrates’ Defense [Plato, The Apology]
Recommended: Frankena, “Morality and Moral Philosophy”
Recommended: Regan, “How Not to Answer Moral Questions”
W2: Virtue Ethics & the Question of the Good Life
Aristotle, “The Nature of Virtue”
Butler, “Can One Lead a Good Life in a Bad Life”
W3: Deontology or Duty Ethics
Kant, “The Categorical Imperative” [Recommended: Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?”]
W4: The Banality of Evil
Arendt, “Postscript” to Eichmann in Jerusalem
Butler, “Hannah Arendt’s Challenge to Adolf Eichmann”
W5: Utilitarianism
Mill, “Utilitarianism”
Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”
W6: Social Contract Theory and the Question of Justice
Hobbes, “The Social Contract”
Rawls, “A Theory of Justice”
W7: Care Ethics
Baier, “The Need for More Than Justice”
Held, “Taking Care: Care as Practice and Value”
[Recommended: Rorty, “Justice as a Larger Loyalty”]
[Recommended: Gammage, “Solidarity Not Charity”]
W8: Beyond Good & Evil
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (selections), On the Genealogy of Morals (First Essay 10-14),
The Gay Science (125, 343) [Recommended: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Prologue, XXV)]
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
W9: Freedom and Responsibility
Beauvoir, “Ambiguity and Freedom” in Ethics of Ambiguity
Fanon, “The Lived Experience of the Black Man” in Black Skin, White Masks
[Recommended: Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”]
[Recommended: Beauvoir, “Introduction” to The Second Sex]
W10: MIDTERM EXAM on Tuesday, May 9 during class time
W11: Animal and Environmental Ethics
Tuana, “Being Affected by Climate Change: The Anthropocene and the Body of Ethics”
Singer, “All Animals Are Equal”
[Recommended: Warren, “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism”]
W12: Bioethics
Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion”
Rachels, “Active and Passive Euthanasia”
Sullivan, “Active and Passive Euthanasia: A Reply to Rachels”
W13: War & Imprisonment
McPherson, “Is Terrorism Distinctively Wrong?”
Davis, “The Prison Industrial Complex”
W14: Final Remarks
MLK, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Plato, Phaedo
Argumentative Paper Due on Tuesday, June 13 by midnight. Submission link on Odtuclass.