Family Ethics Syllabus
Professor Christian Perring
The aim of this course is twofold. Primarily, it is to examine what moral obligations family members have to each other that flow from their roles as parents, siblings, children, or extended family. Secondarily, it is to examine how the main moral and political theories in philosophy are able to address issues of family obligations, and that light considering family ethics sheds on those theories. Understanding the views of historical philosophers on families requires also understanding the history of family relations at the time.
We will start with the history of philosophy, seeing how different philosophers considered the family, the relations between family members, and their role in society.
We will examine the moral responsibilities of family members to each other, the nature of marriage, the question of how fairness is applicable to distributions of activities within a family, and what kind of regulations there can be for family life. We will examine the work of many central philosophical traditions, both Western and Eastern. We will focus on some controversial and difficult cases of moral obligations between spouses, between parents and children, between siblings, and between extended family members.
14 weeks.
Note: there are many readings assigned. Students will be asked to work collaboratively on dividing up the readings and helping to explain them to each other with my assistance.
Week 1
Introduction
Cases and Themes
Obligations of parents to children
Obligations of adult children to ill and aging parents
Equality of men and women
Rights of children
Week 2
Plato and Aristotle
Plato on the family in The Republic
Extracts from D. Brendan Nagel.The Household as the Foundation for Aristotle's Polis. Cambridge UP 2006
John Hittinger. Plato and Aristotle on the Family and the Polis. The Saint Anselm Journal 8.2 2013
June Alice Brown: Plato and the Abolition of the Family. (unpublished)
Elizabeth Belfiore. Family Friendship in Aristotle's Ethics.Ancient Philosophy 21, 2001.
Week 3
Marriage and the family in early modern political thought: Locke, Rousseau
IvánSzelényiLecture 6 - Rousseau on State of Nature and Education
John Locke. The Second Treatise of Government. Chapters 6 and 7.
VI.
James J. Delaney on Rousseau. IEP.
Extracts from
Scott Yenor. Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought. Baylor University Press, 2011.
Week 4
Marriage and the family in late modern political thought
Bentham, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche
Mary SokolJeremy Bentham on Love andMarriage.The Journal of Legal History
Volume 30, Issue 1, 2009
Readings: Immanuel Kant on Sex, Marriage, and Masturbation
Edward Halper. Hegel's Family Values.Review of Metaphysics 54. 2001.
Graham Parkes. Nietzsche and the Family.In The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche.Edited by Ken Gemes and John Richardson. Oxford University Press, 2013
Wilkinson: A Theory of the Family: Critical Appropriations of Hegel and Aristotle. Owl of Minerva (1992) 24.pp 19-40
Week 5
Marriage and the family in twentieth century liberalism
Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family
Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift
Ethics 117 (October 2006): 80–108
Matthew Liao: The Idea of a Duty to Love
The Journal of Value Inquiry (2006) 40:1–22
Mhairi Cowden. What’s love got to do with it?Why a child does not have aright to be loved
Critical Review of International Social and PoliticalPhilosophy, 15:3, 325-345,
Filial obligations to elderly parents: a duty to care?
Maria C. Stuifbergen • Johannes J. M. Van Delden
Med Health Care and Philos (2011) 14:63–71
Week 6
Feminist thought on the family
Mill, J.S. 1869 The Subjection of Women
Eileen M. Hunt. The Family as Cave, Platoon and Prison: The Three Stages of Wollstonecraft's Philosophy of the Family
The Review of Politics. Vol. 64, No. 1 (Winter, 2002), pp. 81-119
Feminism and Family Justice
Richard J. Arneson September, 1996
Week 7
Communitarianism and virtue ethics on the family
Daniel Bell. Communitarianism. SEP.
Howard J. Curzer AN ARISTOTELIAN CRITIQUE OF THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY
American Philosophical Quarterly 47, Number 2, April 2010
A COMMUNITARIAN POSITION PAPER ON THE FAMILY
Prepared ByJean BethkeElshtain et al.
A Feminist Public Ethic of Care Meets the New Communitarian Family Policy
by Eva FederKittay
Ethics
Vol. 111, No. 3 (April 2001), pp. 523-547
Week 8
Care ethics on the family
Raja Halwani: Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics
Hypatia vol. 18, no. 3 (Fall 2003)
Held, Virginia.The Ethics of Care. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Harrington, Mona. Care and Equality: Inventing a New Family Politics. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000.
The Confucian Concept of Jen and the Feminist Ethics of Care: A Comparative Study
CHENYANG LI
Hypatia
Volume 9, Issue 1, pages 70–89, February 1994
Week 9
The family in Confucian thought
Recent Approaches to Confucian Filial Morality
HagopSarkissian
Philosophy Compass
Volume 5, Issue 9, pages 725–734, September 2010
Confucian Family for a Feminist Future
RanjooSeodu Herr
Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East
Volume 22, Issue 4, 2012
YanmingAn: Family Love in Confucius and Mencius
Dao
March 2008, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp 51-55
Week 10 and 11
Debates on Marriage
Elizabeth Brake Marriage and Domestic Partnership SEP 2012
Dan Moller: An Argument Against Marriage
Philosophy / Volume / Issue 01 / January 2003, pp 79-91
Selection from Metz, Tamara; (2010).Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State, and the Case for Their Divorce. Princeton: Princeton Univ Pr.
An Argument for Marriage
By: Landau, Iddo. Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, 79(309), 475-481, 7 p. July 2004.
Is Divorce Promise-Breaking?
By: Brake, Elizabeth. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice: An International Forum, 14(1), 23-39, 17 p. February 2011.
The Promise That Love Will Last
Camilla Kronqvist
Inquiry
Vol. 54, Iss. 6, 2011
On love and fidelity in marriage
PredragCicovacki
Journal of Social Philosophy 24 (3):92-104 (1993)
Week 12
The rights of children
David Archard: Children's Rights. SEP 2014
Children's Rights
By Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez
Genetic Dilemmas and the Child's Right to an Open Future
Davis, Dena S
Hastings Center Report, 27(2), 715.
9 p. MarchApril
1997.
Weeks 13 and 14
Cases:
Children's decision making in serious medical cases
Female Genital Mutilation
Parenting decisions about discipline
Parenting decisions about transgender children
Ethics of selecting or encouraging childhood traits
Lying to children about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy
Lying to children about their origin (adoption, IVF)
Lying to parents to stop them from worrying
Duties to attend family events
Duties to honor the wishes of parents after their death
Relevant books:
1.Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift: Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships. Princeton University Press, 2014.
2.David Archard: Children: Rights and Childhood. Third Edition.Routledge, 2014.
3.David Archard and Colin M. Macleod (Editors).The Moral and Political Status of Children.Oxford University Press, 2002.
4.David Archard and David Benatar.(Editors.) Procreation and Parenthood: The Ethics of Bearing and Rearing Children. Oxford University Press, 2011.
5.David Benatar. Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. Oxford University Press, 2008.
6.Christine Overall. Why Have Children?: The Ethical Debate. MIT Press, 2012
7.Stephen Angle and Michael Slote (Editors) Virtue Ethics and Confucianism.Routledge 2013.
8.Scott Yenor. Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought. Baylor University Press, 2011.
9.Virginia Held. The Ethics of Care. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.
10.Tamara Metz: Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State, and the Case for Their Divorce. Princeton University Press, 2010.
11.Brendan Nagel. The Household as the Foundation for Aristotle's Polis.Cambridge UP 2006.