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Most people wonder, at some point, whether they are truly good. But what does goodness even mean, and why is it so hard to define? In this opening lecture, Lee Braver lays out the roadmap for a course exploring the most influential answers Western philoso

Lee Braver opens his history of Western ethics at its source: Socrates in ancient Athens. The lecture follows Socrates into the marketplace, where he dismantled confident claims about virtue and drew crowds with his persistent questioning of self-proclaim

In this lecture, Lee Braver continues the discussion of Plato's Euthyphro. Now that Socrates has laid out the requirements that an ethical theory must meet, Euthyphro attempts to define piety as "what the gods love," a claim Socrates once again dismantles

In this lecture, Lee Braver introduces John Stuart Mill as the course's first true ethicist, distinguishing him from Socrates, who focused on what an ethical theory needs rather than offering one. Mill's utilitarianism attempts to answer Socrates' challen

What makes an action right or wrong? In this lecture, Lee Braver classifies Mill's utilitarianism as a consequentialist theory, one that judges actions solely by the results they produce rather than the intentions behind them. He explains its core commitm

In this lecture, Lee Braver introduces Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy by positioning it as a critique of utilitarian thinking. Braver explains why Kant believed that genuine ethics cannot be relative, contingent, or based on the pursuit of happiness. In

Having established in the previous lecture that Kant wants ethics grounded in pure reason alone, Lee Braver now tackles the harder problem: how can a rule with any real content come from logic alone, with nothing about human nature to draw on? The lecture

Lee Braver introduces Aristotle as both one of history's greatest philosophers and greatest scientists, then dives into his approach to ethics. Aristotle begins with empirical observation: everything alive acts toward some goal, and all goals point toward

In this lecture, Lee Braver examines Aristotle's radical departure from rule-based and consequence-based ethics. Where thinkers like Kant and Mill focus on right actions, Aristotle asks a different question: what kind of person should you be? Braver shows

In this lecture, Lee Braver examines Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist philosophy and its dramatic implications for ethics. Starting with the famous claim that existence precedes essence, Braver uses Sartre's knife analogy to show how artifacts have built