social ethics questions

5/4/22, 1:23 AM Week 2 Overview - Virtue: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-2-overview-virtue?module_item_id=17540428 1/3

Week 2 Overview - Virtue In the first week we discussed what it means to make a moral claim beyond bad forms of relativism. We also briefly explored the history of ethics in Ancient Greece and how it emerged with an objective sense of a common good and justice as inherently social so as to challenge the moral relativism of the marketplace. We will now dive into Aristotle's virtue ethics as one of the first ethical paradigms to arise from that original context. What is key for us is to see how it came about from a communal context in which the community was still producing together for the needs of the community (and not yet exclusively for private profit), and therefore democratically organized around collectively deliberating about how to use the community’s activities, resources, and wealth for the common good. The word "Virtue" pertains to those transformative practices required for realizing our distinctive humanizing capacities of community building: in other words, this ethical framework can be summarized as focusing on how to realize those higher qualities we have for organizing a distinctively human community of mutual flourishing amongst both the individuals and the collective. Moving forward we will see that the focus of virtue ethics on transformative practice distinguishes it from our modern ethical theories of utilitarianism and deontology: practicing virtues is about grassroots organizing toward holistic empowerment, whereas the latter two modern theories are more about rule-based principles for regulating the competition between individuals in the marketplace. We will therefore want to keep asking whether ethics can create necessary social changes in a meaningful way if it merely tries to impose rules without a more organic emphasis on transformative practice.

To read or watch:

5/4/22, 1:23 AM Week 2 Overview - Virtue: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-2-overview-virtue?module_item_id=17540428 2/3

Review the materials on the Launchpad page Aristotle and Virtue Ethics (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/launchpad-aristotle-and- virtue-ethics) , which will include my short video and also see detailed lecture notes here (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034395/download? wrap=1) (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034395/download? download_frd=1) on Aristotle's texts. (Sandel's chapter 8 in Justice, What's the Right Thing to Do, might be a good supplement) Read Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, book I (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034349/download?wrap=1)

(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034349/download? download_frd=1) , book V.1 (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034380/download?wrap=1)

(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034380/download? download_frd=1) Read Aristotle in Justice Reader, Nicomachean Ethics, pp. 295–299 (books II & X) Read Aristotle in Justice Reader, Politics, pp. 264–266 (chapters 1 & 2), 270–275 (chapters 8–10) Read Martha Nussbaum, "Aristotelian Social Democracy" (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034383/download?wrap=1)

(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034383/download? download_frd=1) Watch the video of Michael Sandel discussing the impact of markets on civic life (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/discussion_topics/7964147) .

To complete or submit: Complete the Reading Assignment Questions assignment (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/assignments/7016118) , which is due by Saturday at Midnight. Please review the Reading Assignment Questions Rubric (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/reading-assignment- questions-rubric) for expectations. Answer the case study questions (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/discussion_topics/7964147) regarding the Sandel video on markets and civic life which is located on the discussion page. Your initial post is due by Wednesday and subsequent posts by

5/4/22, 1:23 AM Week 2 Overview - Virtue: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-2-overview-virtue?module_item_id=17540428 3/3

Sunday. Please review the Class Participation and Discussion (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/class-participation-and- discussion) page for discussion expectations.