Robert Cavalier
Philosophy Department
Carnegie Mellon
Part I History of Ethics
Preface: The
Life of Socrates
Section 1:
Greek Moral Philosophy
Section 2:
Hellenistic and Roman Ethics
Section 3:
Early Christian Ethics
Section 4: Modern
Moral Philosophy
Section 5: 20th
Century Analytic Moral Philosophy
Part II Concepts and Problems
Preface: Meta-ethics,
Normative Ethics and Applied Ethics
Section 1:
Ethical Relativism
Section 2:
Ethical Egoism
Section 3:
Utilitarian Theories
Section 4: Deontological
Theories
Section 5: Virtue
Ethics
Section 6: Liberal
Rights and Communitarian Theories
Section 7: Ethics
of Care
Section 8: Case-based
Moral Reasoning
Section 9: Moral
Pluralism
Part III Applied Ethics
Preface: The
Field of Applied Ethics
Section 1:
The Topic of Euthanasia
Multimedia
Module: A Right to Die? The Dax
Cowart Case
Section 2:
The Topic of Abortion
Multimedia
Module: The Issue of Abortion in
America
Postscript:
Conflict Resolution
Introduction to the Leviathan
(first published in 1651)
NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art
of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make
an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning
whereof is in some principal part within, why may we not say that all automata
(engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have
an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves,
but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to
the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further,
imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by art
is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin,
CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and
strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended;
and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion
to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and
execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to
the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform
his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth
and riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi
(the people's safety) its business; Counsellors, by whom all things needful
for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an
artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil
war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this
body politic were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that
fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.
To describe the nature of this artificial man, I will consider
First, the matter thereof, and the artificer; both which is man.Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, that wisdom is acquired, not by reading of books, but of men. Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to show what they think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs. But there is another saying not of late understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce teipsum, Read thyself: which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance either the barbarous state of men in power towards their inferiors, or to encourage men of low degree to a saucy behaviour towards their betters; but to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another, whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc., and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of passions, which are the same in all men,- desire, fear, hope, etc.; not the similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the things desired, feared, hoped, etc.: for these the constitution individual, and particular education, do so vary, and they are so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man's heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts. And though by men's actions we do discover their design sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our own, and distinguishing all circumstances by which the case may come to be altered, is to decipher without a key, and be for the most part deceived, by too much trust or by too much diffidence, as he that reads is himself a good or evil man.
Secondly, how,and by what covenants it is made; what are the rights and just power or authority of a sovereign; and what it is that preserveth and dissolveth it.
Thirdly, what is a Christian Commonwealth.
Lastly, what is the Kingdom of Darkness.
But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it serves him only with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is to govern a whole nation must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but mankind: which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any language or science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly and perspicuously, the pains left another will be only to consider if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of doctrine admitteth no other demonstration.
