One of the things I’m enjoying teaching most at the moment is a very basic course on Ethics which our Year 9′s are studying.
So far in the term we have journeyed impressively speedily through Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics and Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperatives.
I must say that the troops have taken to it pretty well indeed even though at such a fundamental level the concepts can still be confusing and somewhat alien for a generation in which some/many prefer to go with the flow when it comes to moral decision-making.
Today it’s a leap forward to Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism – that ethical theory one formulation of which says that you should seek to act in such a way which brings the greatest amount of happiness to the largest number of people.
It’s not a bad starting point of course, but there are, as with all these theories, considerable deficiencies with it.
No doubt such an august and learned readership as this Blog is fortunate to possess will have spotted them straight away.
