Secular Ethical Theory in Professional and Civic Life: Long-Term Moral Reasoning Across Roles and Institutions

Most people occupy more than one role: professional, citizen, family member, institutional participant. Ethical frameworks that work cleanly in philosophy seminars encounter real friction when applied to the layered obligations, competing loyalties, and institutional pressures of actual life. This course develops a mature, integrated approach to ethical reasoning — one that draws on the major secular traditions while being honest about their limits and robust enough to sustain rigorous moral thinking across the full complexity of professional and civic existence. By the end of this course you will be able to navigate moral dilemmas that arise from conflicting professional and personal obligations, analyze the ethical dimensions of institutional roles and the phenomenon of moral complicity, apply multiple ethical frameworks in combination rather than in isolation, and articulate and defend a coherent, reflective personal ethical position that integrates theory with lived moral experience. What you will learn: - Role morality and professional ethics: how institutional roles modify but do not eliminate personal moral responsibility - Moral complicity: when and why institutional participation makes individuals responsible for collective harms - The ethics of whistleblowing: competing loyalties to employer, profession, and public interest - Political obligation and civil disobedience: the limits of deference to law and authority - Moral luck and moral luck's discontents: Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel on the limits of rational control - Care ethics and feminist moral philosophy as correctives to impartialist theories - Moral progress: how societies revise their ethical views and what that implies for moral objectivity - Constructing a reflective equilibrium: Rawls's method as a tool for integrating principles and intuitions The course is organized around six extended case studies drawn from professional ethics (healthcare, law, journalism, engineering), political life, and civic participation. Each case is analyzed using a multi-framework approach that requires you to hold multiple ethical lenses simultaneously rather than selecting one. Readings include primary philosophical texts alongside journalism, legal analysis, and historical case materials. Reflection prompts invite sustained personal engagement with the ethical questions raised. A final capstone essay prompt asks you to construct and defend a sustained ethical position on a complex scenario of your choosing. This course is designed for professionals, graduate students, and engaged citizens who have a working knowledge of ethical theory and want to develop a more sophisticated, integrated approach to moral reasoning. It is suitable for those who have completed introductory ethics coursework. Prior familiarity with the three major ethical frameworks is assumed.