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Syllabus - Fall
2006 |
Religious Studies
41 - Morality and Religion |
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Section I |
Section II |
Tuesday & Thursday 12:00 - 1:10pm Roberts North 104 |
Tuesday & Thursday 4:15 - 5:25pm Roberts North 104 |
| What It's All About (Really): An
introduction to reasoning about moral obligation and the relation thereof
to concepts of God in the Jewish and Christian religious traditions.
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Principal Text: Supplementary Texts in Honnold Library: Supplementary Texts in the School of
Theology Library: |
1. Basic Concepts and Principles of
Ethical Theory Required reading: Morality
and Religion, Part I Recommended extra: William
Frankena, Ethics 2. Divine Command Ethical Theory God
as a Sovereign Personal Being Required reading: Morality and Religion, Part II (Covering
Carl F.H. Henry, Emil Fackenheim, Robert M. Adams, and Will Herberg) Recommended
(but not required) extras: Carl
F.H. Henry, Christian Personal Ethics Will
Herberg, Judaism and Modern Man William Lane Craig, "The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical
Foundations for Morality" http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/meta-eth.html Alan Dershowitz, "Why Be a Good Person?" http://www.beliefnet.com/frameset.asp?pageLoc=/story/92/ 3. Natural Law Ethical Theory God
as a Morally Good Personal Being Required reading: Morality and Religion, Part III (Covering
St. Thomas Aquinas) Recommended
(but not required) extras: Ralph
McInerny, Ethica Thomistica Charles
Curran, "Roman Catholic Sexual Ethics: A Dissenting View" St. Thomas Aquinas, Treatise
on Law http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FS/FS090.html#FSQ90OUTP1 Charles Curran, "Roman Catholic
Sexual Ethics: A Dissenting View" http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=113 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations
Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between
Homosexual Persons Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (Catholic Moral Teaching) http://catholic.net/RCC/Indices/Inspirations/vs.txt 4. "Personist" Ethical Theory God
as a Perfectly Rational Personal Being (from Immanuel Kant) God
as a Cosmic Process (from Mordecai Kaplan) God
as Being-Itself (from G.W.F. Hegel and Paul Tillich) Required reading: Morality and Religion, Part IV |
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| Requirements: |
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| Midterm Examination (Date to be negotiated) | 25% |
Final Examination |
50% |
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| Term Paper + Occasional Unannounced Quizzes + Class Participation | 25% |
The
term paper will be in the form of a letter to your parents — or
to other intelligent and interested readers you may happen to know — about five (?)
pages long, due on the day of the final exam, in which you explain
an important issue considered in this course, the arguments
about it, and (if you wish) the position to which you have come after
deliberating about the arguments. Extra research is not necessary
(unless of course you find that none of the positions or arguments
considered here are worthy of your assent). This
is an argumentative course. Not only will a number of conflicting
positions and arguments be considered, but, as you will no
doubt notice, the course is itself organized in the form of a long
argument. (Your instructor is a professor, after all, not a reporter.) Consequently
you should consider and evaluate the arguments and in doing so think
through them — and other arguments too, if you see fit — to
the position you judge to be justified. Class
participation, too, involves argument. Don't permit yourself — or anyone else — to
be brainwashed! So
keep up with the arguments, think about them, and let us all know what
you think. We can't
all be justified in believing as we do, needless to say (unless we
should all happen to be in agreement), but we perhaps can at least
come closer to being justified if we take seriously and think about
what each of us has to say. |
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of Right
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Copyright© 2001-2006 by Clark A. Kucheman, All Rights Reserved
Copyright© 2001-2016 by Melody E. Kucheman, All Rights Reserved