The Reckoning

The finale: not a fifth answer to Glaucon but a weighing of the four — the genealogy that turns suspicion on morality itself, the trolley that neither theory can steer, the objection that fells them both, and the honest ways to live once no proof arrives.

A course on the thought of Ethics.

Course outline

1. After the Battle — The reckoning is framed. Four courses have given four answers to Glaucon and not one has compelled a man determined to disbelieve. Nietzsche refuses to add a fifth. Instead he changes the question…
2. The Genealogy — Nietzsche's scandalous history of 'good.' There were two moralities: the noble's spontaneous good/bad, and the reactive good/evil born among the powerless out of ressentiment. The 'slave revolt in…
3. The Trolley — Foot takes the lectern. A runaway trolley will kill five unless you divert it onto one — and the variants she and her heirs devised (the transplant surgeon, the man on the footbridge) expose a gap…
4. One Thought Too Many — Williams takes the lectern and turns on BOTH surviving systems. Jim and the Indians: utilitarianism makes you a mere channel for the best total outcome, severing you from the projects that make you a…
5. After Virtue — MacIntyre delivers the verdict. Modern moral debate is interminable — abortion, war, justice argued forever with no resolution — because the disputants wield fragments of incompatible traditions and…
6. Living Without the Answer — Nietzsche returns to close the whole program. Glaucon's ring was never taken off by a proof; five courses of answers and demolitions leave no fifth theory standing. But the reckoning is not…

Part of the Simposeum course library.