These audio files are recordings of lectures taken from the PHI118 History of Ethics course, in the Department of Philosophy, given by our Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy, Angie Hobbs.

This module offers a critical introduction to the history of ethical thought in the West, examining some of the key ideas of e.g.Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Bentham, Mill, Nietzsche, Rawls and Gilligan. It thus provides a textual introduction to some of the main types of ethical theory: the ethics of flourishing and virtue; deontology; utilitarianism; contractualism. The close interconnections between ethics and other branches of philosophy (e.g. metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics) will be highlighted, as will the connections between ethics and other disciplines (e.g. psychology, anthropology). The main text for the module is Singer, P. (ed.), 1994, Ethics, Oxford University Press.

Image credit Tetraktys [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons