Course Syllabus
Lecture 1 Being Good and Everything Else: An Introduction
Lecture 2 Being Good and Being Traditional: Why Do We
Call It “Ancient Wisdom”?
Lecture 3 Being Good and Being Wise: Can Virtue
Be Taught?
Lecture 4 Being Good and Being Pious: Plato’s Euthyphro
Lecture 5 Being Good and Being Happy: Plato’s Republic
Lecture 6 Aristotle’s Ethics
Lecture 7 Being Good and Being Successful: Aquinas on
the Meaning of Life.
Lecture 8 Being Good and Being Successful According to
Machiavelli: Is It Either/Or?
Lecture 9 Being Good and Being Evil: Is Humanity Naturally
Good? (Hobbes vs. Rousseau)
Lecture 10 Being Good and Being Scientific: Can Morality
Be a Science? (Descartes, Hume, Mill)
Lecture 11 Being Good and Being Fair: The Ethics of Kant
Lecture 12 Being Good and Being Secular: Can an Atheist Be
Ethical? The Ethics of Jean-Paul Sartre
Lecture 13 Being Good in Eastern Ethics
Lecture 14 Being Good and Surviving: Ethics and the Future of
Western Civilization
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This course addresses some of the eternal questions that man has grappled with since the
beginning of time. What is good? What is bad? Why is justice important? Why is it better
to be good and just than it is to be bad and unjust? Most human beings have the faculty to
discern between right and wrong, good and bad behavior, and to make judgments over what is
just and what is unjust. But why are ethics important to us? This course looks at our history
as ethical beings. We’ll travel into the very heart of mankind’s greatest philosophical
dilemmas—to the origins of our moral values and the problem of ethics. Are ethics universal,
absolute and unchanging—or are they culturally relative, changing, and man-made? Furthermore,
we’ll delve into the creation of ethical systems—not just for ourselves, but also for society
at large. And we will consider the ongoing process of establishing ethical frameworks for
society.
The philosopher William James separated questions into DEAD issues and LIVE issues. For example:
Are we good or evil? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Are we free or determined? In
this lecture, we focus on the LIVE issues or the BIG QUESTIONS.
 Ethics: A History of Moral Thought (Booklet)
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Professor
Peter Kreeft
(Boston College)
Peter Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College. He has written over 40 books including Fundamentals of the Faith, The Best Things in Life, Back to Virtue, and The Unaborted Socrates. Besides writing, Kreeft contributes to Christian publications and speaks at numerous c...
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Course Forum
Course Final Exam
Philosophy
