SOCSCI 103

• Ethics

  The study of what is good and bad, right and wrong, in human behavior and conduct
• There is a need to study ethics as a subject in college because not everyone has an inherent sense of what is good and bad behavior
• People's understanding of the good is shaped by their cultural traditions and often goes unquestioned
• Cultural traditions that shape people's understanding of the good

  • Penitents whipping themselves during Holy Week in Pampanga
  • Engaging in sexual activities for excitement and fun being considered amoral in some cultures
  • Wife beating being customary in some cultures where women's status is that of property
• Not all cultural conceptions of the good reflect what genuinely leads to human flourishing, as some cultures can be destructive
• The good is usually defined by a dominant system or group based on what has worked for people to flourish
• Ethics provides a basis to discern one's own accepted ethical systems and broaden one's conceptions of the good
• Ethics

  Grounded on the experience of free persons who have to act in difficult situations, involving the desire to realize the good
• Ethical questions arise when human beings intuit that their actions must authentically fulfill their freedom in response to a ground of authentic human existence
• Ethics is about realizing the fullest potential as free persons acting in the world and doing right for others, not just about being efficient or achieving goals
• This course explores how philosophers have tried to explain the intuition of the good and the paths to realizing a life lived according to the good