Recently, I was discussing the possibility of teaching a short summer course in ethics and culture at a university in Bangladesh. I proposed the following outline to them. It will be an elective for first year students with no previous exposure to religious studies or philosophy. As a result, it has to be a bit of an introduction to philosophy, history of religion and politics with an emphasis of what all these mean in a modern Muslim context. Thoughts and suggestions welcome.
Ethics and culture
This course introduces students to principles and concepts of ethics and their application to personal life. It establishes a basic understanding of social responsibility, relationship with social and cultural aspects, and eventually requires each student to develop a framework for making ethical decisions. Students learn a systematic approach to moral reasoning. It also examines personal ethical perspectives as well as social-cultural norms and values in relation to their use in our society. (This paragraph was the existing course description that I had to work with to design the course - Z.)
Week 1: Greek philosophy on divine/secular ethics
Plato's Euthyphro ('Is a thing good because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is good'). Plato's theory of forms as absolute good.
Epicurus and problem of evil; ethics as pursuit of pleasure and prevention of pain.
Week 2: Judeo-Christian ethics
Tribal ethics and Abrahamic covenant. Commandments of Moses.
Apocalypticism. The emergence of afterlife and development of Satan.
Jesus and the ethics of apocalyptic altruism/generosity.
Week 3: Qur'anic ethics
Qur'anic legal verses and traditional Islamic laws. Focus on slavery, concubinage and jihad and the cultural context of 6th century Arabia vs. the present day.
Contemporary Muslim family law and practice in Bangladesh.
Week 4: Secular ethics
Evolutionary psychology and origins of ethics.
Economic approaches; utilitarianism, game theory, prisoners' dilemma, ethics of reciprocity.
Marxist ethics.
Week 5: 20th century international ethics
Nazi genocide, Israel/Palestine conflict.
1971 liberation war of Bangladesh from Pakistan. Use of Islamic nationalist ideology to justify mass murder and rape by Pakistani army.
International law and Geneva conventions
International Declaration of Human Rights
Week 6: 21st century international ethics
Terrorism, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq
Global warming, climate change and responsibilities to future generations.
Week 7: Bangladeshi ethics
Constitution and laws
Typical LDC problems: poor governance, corruption, violence, failure of democratic process and institutions.
Week 8: Applied ethics
Student and professional ethics.
Impossible is nothing.
Z,
I do not see clear demarcation in the outline between what is 'ethical' and what is 'moral'. I find a problem understanding 'quranic' ethics, when, in my mind, you are talking about universal ethics.
that said, I wish week 4, 5 and 8 would be expanded since they would be addressing ethics application.
it would be a good idea that you post the lectures for feedback; just an idea.
good luck.
There is not a clear distinction between ethics and morality, except that when people talk about morality they more often restrict themselves to a particular religious context.
My goal in putting together the course was to cover a broad spectrum of both religious and non-religious ethics. I also wanted to apply these to different political situations, since big political debates have important underlying ethical debates which need to be understood. My thinking was that once students had a knowledge of various ethical frameworks (Islamic, secular, etc) and had tried to apply them to a larger context (such as debates on Israel/Palestine, terrorism, Bangladeshi genocide) they would be better equipped to try to apply these to their own lives. Hence week 8 is really reserved for students to produce their own "ethical world view statements", synthesizing something from the contents of their course to apply to their own student/professional lives.
Anyways, the university administration is reviewing the course outline. If they approve it, I'll certainly work on it further. =)
The course seems fascinating.
Oftentimes, it seems hard for Muslims to comprehend between culture and morality. Morality is simply your sense of right and wrong, oftentimes, influenced by religion but not solely by religion though.
Islam is an aspect of culture, but for a Muslim to make this statement, is to "deny Islam's validity" which I do not find an issue per se. I consider religion a social construction and since we can neither prove or disprove the existence of God using human logic, my belief in God is accepted on faith, which lies outside the scientific inquiry.
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