PHILOSOPHY 403
Ethics and Action
Fall 2016

Click here for the syllabus.

Scroll to bottom for newest entry.  Please check this page frequently for announcements, assignments, web links of interest, and so on.

To begin with, here are some sites you ought to get to know.  Our department web site includes this list of student research tools (with some amusements at the bottom).  Note especially William Stephens' guidelines for paper writing.

Additional course readings will either be posted here, distributed to you via PDF, or distributed to you via photocopy.  But the main book, The Perfectionist Turn, must be purchased.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is available here.  (The Irwin translation is better; if you still have your copy from PHIL301 use that instead.)
Optional additional reading on Aristotle:  If you like Seinfeld, in this essay I use that TV show to explain Aristotle's ethical theory.  If you liked either the films of Lord of the Rings or the original trilogy, in this essay I use that to explain Aristotle's ethical theory.  (These are PDFs of scans - a bit fuzzy but still legible.)
De Anima is here, and of possible interest is Parts of Animals and Movement of Animals.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica -available here; Summa Contra Gentiles - available here.

Spinoza, Ethics - here or here