Aristotle Virtue Ethics

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course will be an exploration of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a text in ancient philosophy and as the inspiration for contemporary accounts of virtue ethics. The topics for the course will center on the idea of virtuous action, but will range widely across important themes in both Aristotle’s ethics and contemporary neo-Aristotelian ethics. Because the course fulfills one of the graduate program’s history requirements, students can expect to work closely with the Nicomachean Ethics and relevant secondary literature. They can also expect to become well-versed in the current literature in virtue ethics. Required reading for the course includes the Nicomachean Ethics (translation TBA), Rosalind Hursthouse’s On Virtue Ethics, and a number of articles that will be made available through Blackboard.