TMS - Ethics: A History of Moral Thought
by Peter Kreeft

Format: MP3
Bitrate: 32 Kbps

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.

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 conferences. He received his bachelor’s degree from Calvin College and his Ph.D. from Fordham University. Before teaching at Boston College, he taught at Villanova University for three years. Kreeft has been at Boston College for 38 years.

14 Lectures
35 minutes/lecture

1  Being Good and Everything Else: An Introduction
2  Being Good and Being Traditional: Why Do We Call It “Ancient Wisdom”?
3  Being Good and Being Wise: Can Virtue Be Taught?
4  Being Good and Being Pious: Plato’s Euthyphro
5  Being Good and Being Happy: Plato’s Republic
6  Aristotle’s Ethics
7  Being Good and Being Successful: Aquinas on the Meaning of Life.
8  Being Good and Being Successful According to Machiavelli: Is It Either/Or?
9  Being Good and Being Evil: Is Humanity Naturally Good? (Hobbes vs. Rousseau)
10 Being Good and Being Scientific: Can Morality Be a Science? (Descartes, Hume, Mill)
11 Being Good and Being Fair: The Ethics of Kant
12 Being Good and Being Secular: Can an Atheist Be Ethical? The Ethics of Jean-Paul Sartre
13 Being Good in Eastern Ethics
14 Being Good and Surviving: Ethics and the Future of Western Civilization