2

You can't Go it Alone [handwritten]

FOUNDATIONS OF MORAL OBLIGATION

Lecture 1

What this course is not: It is not ethics for dentists,
it is not a religious course, it is not a leadership course --
it is moral philosophy. It is similar to my Stanford ex-
perience. It is not for POW's. I am not a philosphy
professor and don't mean to compete with your favorite teacher
in that field. The moral philosophy that we treat most is
popularly known as ethics, but this includes in this course,
the study of epistemology, that is the study of knowledge,
its limits and validity. We also study metaphysics, which
is reality itself or being. The purpose of the course is to
give you an opportunity to get your philosophical house in
order, to put yourself on the epistemological, metaphysical
and ethical map and to no longer rely on inconsistent slogans
and the like. [Marginal bracket with arrow starts] We are not treating the transient or the
immediately applicable. We are aiming at the solid and
permanent aspects of man's concerns. A long view of man's
life and a vision of the greatness to which he may aspire. [Marginal bracket with arrow ends]
This is a subject for which we all seem to have a great
interest. For as Sam Johnson said, "We are perpetually moralists [arrow],
but geometricians only by chance." (I now skim the description
of my course week by week, and say that today's introductory
session is about prison because that is very intense