Handouts
There are actually quite a few good web resources for this class. That said, I do not recommend that you surf the web on your own finding sources, because most of the ones you find are actually very bad, given that the people who author them have no idea what they are talking about. Below I’ve listed some good resources for each topic you’ll be studying in the course. Note: remember to never use a web resource for a paper or to study for a test that is not below without sending me an email first. You may find up doing yourself a real disservice following the advice of some anonymous uninformed web author!
CP’s Review Sheets
These are the sheets I’ve created for the material. (The vast majority of these I wrote, but there are a few which borrow heavily from handouts created by other authors. I can’t recall who they were, so HT to them, whoever they are!)
1. Confucius Introduction Overview
3. A Model Confucius Interpretation,
7. Egoism
8. Aristotle
11. Hospers and Rule Utilitarianism
12. Kai Nielsen and Consequentialism
14. Williams against Utilitarianism
15. Kant Overview
17. Teleology and Deontology
18. Virtue Ethics Diagrammed
19. Deontology Diagrammed
20. Consequentialism Diagrammed
22. Key Confucian Concepts and Disciples
24. A Guide to Book Two of the Analects
Sheets from Other Professors
1. Ethics Updates. Site operated by Prof. Hinman at UC San Diego. It’s remarkably comprehensive, lots of power point stuff, video, lecture notes, and so on. You’ll have to do some navigating, but it’s very useful. Puts my web guides to shame!
2. “Kant’s Four Examples” from Craig Duncan, Ithaca College.
Standard Reference Material
A. WIKIPEDIA. Wikipedia is actually a decent source, especially for basic undergraduate level review. I realize that some professors are “anti-Wiki” but as long as you are not using it to cite in a paper (I draw the line there) but are rather using it to help you to understand the material we are studying, I am fine with you using the source. Remember that with Wiki, you have no idea who wrote the entry, and it could be totally wrong! Here are the pieces they have that would be of use:
3. Emotivism
7. Confucianism
9. Bentham
10. Utilitarianism
11. John Stuart Mill
12. Kant
13. The Categorical Imperative
14. Deontology
15. Bernard Williams
16. Nietzsche
B. STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY. This really is the central authoritative resource for philosophy on the web. Unfortunately, it is not really written for an undergraduate audience, so it is not that easy to read. So this resource is for the more intrepid and enterprising students who would like to go further into what these theories/concepts mean. They have entries on
1. Relativism
2. Psychological and Ethical Egoism
3. Subjectivism (cognitivism) vs Emotivism (non-cognitivism)
5. Confucius