The study of ethics is supposed to make us kinder and more open-hearted. At best, it helps us acquiesce and at worst it makes us complicit. Many ethics textbooks include some metaethical reflections on the pedagogical aims of teaching ethics. These typically involve helping students to see the multifacited and complex nature of ethical disputes or the dangers of absolutist pronouncements about morality. The trouble is that students typically walk away from ethics classes with a heightened sense of their own moral enlightenment and ability to reason their way through moral disputes, or the sense that these disputes have no ultimate end. Most ethics textbooks strongly imply that the answer lies somewhere in the middle (guided, no doubt, by Aristotle). None of them discuss the material effects of power on the lives of oppressed people, or suggest that there is anything to be done about it. None of them say plainly that there are people that want you, personally, dead.
How to Teach Ethics
How to Teach Ethics
How to Teach Ethics
The study of ethics is supposed to make us kinder and more open-hearted. At best, it helps us acquiesce and at worst it makes us complicit. Many ethics textbooks include some metaethical reflections on the pedagogical aims of teaching ethics. These typically involve helping students to see the multifacited and complex nature of ethical disputes or the dangers of absolutist pronouncements about morality. The trouble is that students typically walk away from ethics classes with a heightened sense of their own moral enlightenment and ability to reason their way through moral disputes, or the sense that these disputes have no ultimate end. Most ethics textbooks strongly imply that the answer lies somewhere in the middle (guided, no doubt, by Aristotle). None of them discuss the material effects of power on the lives of oppressed people, or suggest that there is anything to be done about it. None of them say plainly that there are people that want you, personally, dead.