This paper describes one form of not-knowing the good that interferes with teaching ethics, namely the use of moral clichés to justify one’s moral behavior. After identifying some of the key problems with an uncritical acceptance of moral clichés (e.g. the fact that they aim for universality, lack of room for exceptions, and take the place of thinking), two common features of moral clichés are articulated.

This paper considers some of the specific challenges and rewards involved in teaching a course in the Philosophy of Love (and Sex). The paper begins with an overview of the purpose of this sort of class, what approaches one could take, what texts work best, and what sort fundamental questions should be asked. In addition to explaining how to maintain a proper balance between the philosophical examination of love and a discussion of concrete examples, the paper articulates three general registers of concern when teaching the Philosophy of Love (and Sex) and why this course poses unique challenges to the traditional philosopher.

Many of the concrete examples found in older philosophical texts that aim at showing how a philosophical idea is relevant tend, for many students, to be mysterious. While instructors can substitute examples from their own lives to show an idea’s relevance, such examples can fail to be effective since college students are not a homogenous group and faculty often do not know their students well. This paper describes a writing assignment where students are asked to choose an event from their lives and write, in the first person, from the perspective of the theorist they are analyzing. Such an assignment not only challenges students to use their own lives to explain a philosophical idea but also allows charges them to use philosophical ideas to examine their own lives.

This paper advocates the use of Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” in standard introductory ethics courses. Not only is the Carol a brief and entertaining read but it incorporates themes from the history of ethics and raises issues concerning normative theories that are typically covered in introductory ethics courses. In particular, the book provides students with the opportunity to examine the nature and limitations of ethical egoism, it raises difficulties involved in somewhat quick efforts to synthesize utilitarian and Kantian ethics, and, finally, it poses certain challenges to construing virtue ethics as a real alternative to a principle-based normative ethics.

If graduate school is a kind of professional school, then graduate school in philosophy should train students in the many facets of the profession. This paper describes the nature of the “philosophy workshop” by comparing and contrasting it to two other components of graduate school: lecture courses and research seminars. In contrast to lecture courses that provide a large quantity of information in a succinct and well-guided fashion, and research seminars that concentrate on a specific topic or line of argument, philosophy workshops offers students (and instructors) a more exploratory and more open-ended approach to learning philosophy.

The goal of this paper is to increase interest in Cicero’s “De Officiis” as both a textbook and resource for developing curricula at the secondary and post-secondary level. The paper begins by tracing the extensive influence that the work has had in ethics, political philosophy, literature, and education before proceeding to an explanation for why its influence has waned since the nineteenth century. Next, the paper contends that “De Officiis” addresses some of the most relevant and pressing questions in ethics. Finally, the paper provides suggestions on how the work can be used in the classroom.