What the hell....

This Telecourse meets the same goals as the classroom version of ETHC 2030, but by an entirely different route. The independence of the Telecourse method in itself gives greater freedom in time and space—you can study when you please and you do not have to “be there.”

The freedom to study also carries special responsibilities. The successful student must have greater discipline, greater initiative, and greater creative talents than the regular classroom program requires—in addition to all the usual skills and abilities of a college student. Most students may find that a good Telecourse is not “easy,” but in many respects is harder than classroom courses. Nevertheless, even when it may be harder, it is certainly more rewarding and interesting—for the Telecourse is, after all, customized for every student.

Ethics 2030, in all its forms, introduces Moral Philosophy to the college student who has no previous study in this area. The course covers the fundamentals in a) the terminology of Moral Philosophy, b) the various theories of Moral Philosophy, and c) some of the methods of moral argumentation, or reasoning.

Our Telecourse venue approaches these subjects by a technique popularly known as the Case Study Method. That is, the topics are examined (in the text and in the videotapes) by first presenting a true-life scenario that contains a moral conflict or problem, secondly allowing each person to respond to the situation with his or her own judgment for action, and thirdly evaluating the various answers to see if a best answer can be made. The Case Study Method assumes that the participants already have wisdom and experience in the topics discussed, but we shall see that this assumption itself admits of considerable variation. Some people are wiser than others.

Midterm, an essay-test will be due, in which the students show what they have learned in those weeks. It is not advisable to do research or to use outside sources—we are looking for your understanding of the materials assigned, and for your ability to respond intelligently to those materials. The tests will cover the six tapes and the corresponding textbook chapters, but these do not always “match-up” in time. Before each test, I will explain the materials to be covered; but the tests are take-home and one week is allowed for sending them back.

If you study the materials, you will find that some popular opinions are not very wise. One such opinion is Relativism—the belief that morality is different for different cultures or different individuals. Relativism is rejected by philosophers, moral theorists, and everybody who has good sense. We are not here to reject all theories (skepticism) nor to embrace every idiotic theory that comes along (post-modernism). We are here to find out what really is wise. Although this attempt is not easy, it is worth the effort. Even if we never achieve complete success, we can at least rule out some of the worst errors.

When I send out the tests, by email and as announcements on your my.Southwest page, I will try to explain what I am after by way of an answer. All the questions asked are difficult to answer, in the sense that they put you between a rock and a hard place—for example, should a lawyer or a priest betray someone’s trust if it prevents a great injustice from happening? Or should you lie when the outcome of the truth is awful? The point is to examine these real-life “paradoxes” from both sides, and then make a wise choice.

We use ONLY the “Ethics in America Study Guide” for this course (skip Chapters 1 and 13), sold in our college bookstore. We do NOT use the “Resource Reader,” so you need not buy that. We use ALL the videotapes in the series. Read one chapter each week, and watch one video; some videos are repeated on TV, so the book and the video will not always match-up. But if you do one of each every week, as scheduled on TV, in the end it will come out. The schedule is online, and the tapes are available at our library as well.