Despite my opposition to the College’s foreign language requirement, I do not harbor resentment toward all University-mandated courses per se. On the contrary, I feel one requirement is noticeably lacking from the College’s curriculum: Ethical Reasoning. Per its website, the College aims to “provide students with an extensive base of intellectual content and skills that enables them to explore ideas, evaluate evidence critically [and] draw reasoned conclusions.” Unfortunately, the College’s current curriculum doesn’t deem questions of morality and ethics worthy enough of their own requirement. Although “Moral, Philosophical, and Religious Perspectives” exists as a subset of the humanities requirement, the field can be avoided entirely if a student opts to take a “Fine Arts” and a “Literature” class instead, allowing a student to graduate with a liberal arts degree even if he never grapples with the vexing dilemmas moral philosophy presents. This is a huge missed opportunity for College students. Ethical reasoning courses demand students understand both morality and reason. The lessons from ethics courses are thus not merely facts to memorize for a test and soon forget; they are guidelines that remain relevant long after University life.
Missing from many non-ethical reasoning courses are the normative (i.e., value-based) judgments and debates that force students not only to learn “what is,” but to decide “what ought to be.” For example, while a biology class can teach how to use embryonic stem cells for scientific research, an ethics class forces students to answer the infinitely more challenging question of whether we should. Ethical reasoning courses thus present challenges other courses do not. They force students to defend their assertions not simply by citing facts and figures, but on the strengths of the underlying moral arguments. Merely stating embryonic stem cell research contributes to scientific progress is then not a sufficient argument to justify the practice — no more so than stating unpaid labor boosts the economy can justify slavery. Both are positive (i.e., fact-based) statements that may be true, but insufficient to direct our decision-making. The deciding factor is ultimately our understanding of morality and how it pertains to a given situation. In a pluralistic society with no state religion or universal moral code, an understanding of ethics becomes crucial to bridge the gap between what we know to be efficient and what we judge to be right.
The typical knock on ethical and political theory is that it is entirely subjective; that at the end of the day, whether one agrees more with Kant or Mill is only someone’s opinion, and thus not as worthwhile of academic study as fact-based fields like math or history. But this criticism is misguided. While one theory cannot be proven definitively better than another in the way that one can mathematically prove two angles are congruent, it is still possible to offer compelling arguments as to why one theory is more reasonable than another. Indeed, the very “subjectivity” of ethics courses highlights the benefits of the field. The nature of ethical arguments demands that students rely on logical reasoning rather than concrete statistics. This of course entails learning what makes an argument logical in the first place, and perhaps more importantly, what makes an argument fallacious. The benefits of this education thus extend into everyday life in ways lessons from math and other similar classes rarely do. While an introduction to astronomy won’t improve my civic duty to vote responsibly, recognizing the common logical fallacies infesting our political discourse certainly will. At a time when many college students are failing to learn how to think critically, requiring ethical reasoning courses is likely the simplest way to ensure our University’s graduates buck this trend.
The University would not be the first to establish this requirement. A feature in The Atlantic discusses how one ethical reasoning course at Harvard — “Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory” — became so popular after the requirement was introduced that it now trails only Intro to Economics and Intro to Computer Science in student enrollment. The reason, according to both the professor and his students, is that the course will “change your life.” While it would be naive to expect all ethics courses to be similarly awe-inspiring experiences, such stories illustrate the extent to which ethics courses can affect students’ daily lives. Ethical reasoning classes are certainly as worthwhile as the more fact-driven fields of study; indeed, for the typical student graduating with a liberal arts degree, an understanding of ethics is more worthwhile. Ethics courses require students not only to understand why something is just or unjust, but to logically argue in support of their beliefs and recognize illogical arguments elsewhere. While understanding how to calculate a derivative is unlikely to play a role in my future, understanding Kant’s categorical imperative and the logic behind it provides a moral basis for life. If the purpose of the College is truly to produce students able to “draw reasoned conclusions,” then establishing an ethical reasoning requirement is the best course of action to achieve this result.
Matt Winesett is a Viewpoint writer.
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