Welcome! You've reached the webpage for Philosophy 21001, Introduction to Ethics, taught by Dr. Michael Byron at Kent State University.

Three of the great traditions of ethical theory, deriving from philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, offer us rather different but nonetheless systematic ways of thinking about what we ought to do, what sort of lives we ought to lead, and what morality requires of us. Moral theories of this kind have, however, come under attack recently, on the grounds that they fail to reflect the experiences of many moral agents, including those of women. In this course we explore not only the three traditions mentioned, but also some of the contemporary critiques of those traditions.

Metaethics is the study of the nature and justification of moral judgments, as distinct from ethics, which aims to articulate principles, criteria, or alternative approaches to understanding and achieving goodness and right action. Metaethics studies the concepts, ontology, and modes of justification employed within ethics.