Ethics in Modern Society

Every day you make decisions that affect other people — what you buy, what you post, how you vote, how you treat the stranger in front of you. Most of us navigate these moments on instinct and inherited habit. This course gives you something better: a working command of the ethical frameworks that philosophers have refined over two and a half thousand years, applied directly to the dilemmas of modern life.

Across five modules and twelve lessons, Prof. Jonathan Hale moves from the foundations of ethical theory — consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics — into the places where theory gets tested: public institutions, technology and AI, medicine, and the marketplace. You will learn to distinguish ethics from mere moral intuition, to spot the hidden assumptions in everyday arguments, and to reason your way through dilemmas where every option has a cost.

By the end, you will not have a rulebook — no honest course can promise that. You will have something more durable: a trained capacity to think ethically under pressure, and a practical framework for acting on your conclusions. Suitable for professionals, students, and anyone who suspects that "it felt right at the time" is not a good enough standard.