5/4/22, 1:23 AM Week 2 Overview – Virtue: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business
https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-2-overview-virtue?module_item_id=17540428 1/3
Week 2 Overview – Virtue
In the first week we discussed
what it means to make a moral
claim beyond bad forms of
relativism. We also briefly
explored the history of ethics in
Ancient Greece and how it
emerged with an objective
sense of a common good and
justice as inherently social so as
to challenge the moral relativism
of the marketplace. We will now
dive into Aristotle’s virtue ethics as one of the first ethical paradigms to arise from that
original context. What is key for us is to see how it came about from a communal
context in which the community was still producing together for the needs of the
community (and not yet exclusively for private profit), and therefore democratically
organized around collectively deliberating about how to use the community’s activities,
resources, and wealth for the common good. The word “Virtue” pertains to those
transformative practices required for realizing our distinctive humanizing capacities of
community building: in other words, this ethical framework can be summarized as
focusing on how to realize those higher qualities we have for organizing a distinctively
human community of mutual flourishing amongst both the individuals and the
collective. Moving forward we will see that the focus of virtue ethics on transformative
practice distinguishes it from our modern ethical theories of utilitarianism and
deontology: practicing virtues is about grassroots organizing toward holistic
empowerment, whereas the latter two modern theories are more about rule-based
principles for regulating the competition between individuals in the marketplace. We
will therefore want to keep asking whether ethics can create necessary social changes
in a meaningful way if it merely tries to impose rules without a more organic emphasis
on transformative practice.
To read or watch:
5/4/22, 1:23 AM Week 2 Overview – Virtue: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business
https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-2-overview-virtue?module_item_id=17540428 2/3
Review the materials on the Launchpad page Aristotle and Virtue Ethics
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/launchpad-aristotle-andvirtue-ethics) , which will include my short video and also see detailed lecture notes
here (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034395/download?
wrap=1) (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034395/download?
download_frd=1) on Aristotle’s texts. (Sandel’s chapter 8 in Justice, What’s the Right
Thing to Do, might be a good supplement)
Read Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, book I
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034349/download?wrap=1)
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034349/download?
download_frd=1) , book V.1
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034380/download?wrap=1)
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034380/download?
download_frd=1)
Read Aristotle in Justice Reader, Nicomachean Ethics, pp. 295–299 (books II & X)
Read Aristotle in Justice Reader, Politics, pp. 264–266 (chapters 1 & 2), 270–275
(chapters 8–10)
Read Martha Nussbaum, “Aristotelian Social Democracy”
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034383/download?wrap=1)
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034383/download?
download_frd=1)
Watch the video of Michael Sandel discussing the impact of markets on civic life
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/discussion_topics/7964147) .
To complete or submit:
Complete the Reading Assignment Questions assignment
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/assignments/7016118) , which is
due by Saturday at Midnight. Please review the Reading Assignment Questions
Rubric (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/reading-assignmentquestions-rubric) for expectations.
Answer the case study questions
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/discussion_topics/7964147)
regarding the Sandel video on markets and civic life which is located on the
discussion page. Your initial post is due by Wednesday and subsequent posts by
5/4/22, 1:23 AM Week 2 Overview – Virtue: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business
https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-2-overview-virtue?module_item_id=17540428 3/3
Sunday. Please review the Class Participation and Discussion
(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/class-participation-anddiscussion) page for discussion expectations.

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