Dr Alex Voorhoeve

This course is primarily intended for students on MSc Philosophy and Public Policy, MSc Economics and Philosophy, MSc Philosophy of the Social Sciences and MSc Political Theory. It is also available to students as an outside option where permitted by their programme regulations.

This course discusses central topics in moral and political philosophy. We will read seminal texts by the greatest writers of the western tradition in moral and political philosophy: Aristotle, John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. We'll also discuss leading contemporary authors, including John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Bernard Williams and Frances Kamm, as well as recent findings in moral psychology. Through the study of major philosophers, this course provides students with the tools to think and write clearly and independently about moral and political problems.

Seminars PH416 20 x one-and-a-half hours (MT, LT); Students are strongly advised to attend PH214 Morality and Values lectures, 20 x one hour (MT, LT).

Students will be required to participate in seminar discussions and to write three formative essays: two in the Michaelmas Term, and one in Lent.

Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, Irwin translation, Hackett
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, David Fate Norton and Mary Norton, editors, Oxford.
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Mary J. Gregor (Editor), Christine M. Korsgaard (Introduction), Cambridge University Press.
J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, Hackett
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press.
Adam Smith The Essential Adam Smith. Robert Heilbroner (Editor) Norton.

Recommended texts

John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, Harvard University Press
David Wiggins Ethics. Penguin.
Alex Voorhoeve Conversations on Ethics, Oxford University Press.

In addition, we will read a large number of articles, most of which will be available via clicking on the relevant links in Moodle.

A two-hour written examination in the ST (67%) on the material covered in the first 15 weeks of the course and a 2,000-word summative essay on the material covered in the final 5 weeks of the LT material, due in the first week of ST (33%).