A. MY OWN APPROACH TO TEACHING ETHICS
Whatever else I do, I always include the material noted below.
This material is expanded elsewhere on this enrichment page.
Much of what is below can be found -- since summer
2005 -- in my book
Living Large: Transformative
Work at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality (Laurel,
MD: Tai Sophia Press, 2004)
1. My approach begins with our class mission -- with its seven aspects:
to (i) Come to Life more Fully
so as
to (ii) ACT
(iii) more Wisely
and (iv) more Effectively
to (v) Reduce Suffering
and to (vi) Promote Possibility
(vii) for our Common Life
a) To Come to Life
More Fully: The mission highlights
a POSITIVE APPROACH to ethical practice -- i.e. LIVING LARGE
b) To ACT: The
mission
notes that ethical practice is ACTION-ORIENTED / ACTION-GUIDING..
c) More Wisely and More
Effectively: The mission is CHARACTER-BASED. Full
ethical action springs from one's character --
one's good habits of
attitude and action. It involves
the intersection
of Stephen Covey's three aspects of a virtue or
habit of good character:
(i) "knowing what to do,"(acting wisely)
(ii) "knowing how to do (acting effectively) and
(iii) "wanting to do" -- the commitment-motivational factor
d) The mission
brings
in the first ETHICAL CRITERIA:
To reduce (unecessary or surplus) suffering and
to promote (constructive) possilitity
for our common life. --------------------------------->
"Our common life" points to the Traffic Light Model -- Red and Gold
2. The focus on the social nature of
ethics -- "our common life"
takes us to the Traffic Light Model -- with its
outer criteria - the RED of what is good for the whole and
the GOLD of what is fair to each participant part -- and with its
inner criteria -- the GREEN of responsibility
3. The Traffic Light Model is used
in two forms -- to
describe
minimal ethics and to describe aspirational ethics
[The Three Houses of Ethics are a background to this.]
4. RED: The Good of the
Whole -- wholes are of
different
sizes -- think of the three nested domains:
The Planetary/ Interconnectedness/ Web of all life
The Political /
Insitutional (e.g. economic, governmental, educational and religions
instutions among many others)
The Personal
/ Interpersonal
5. GOLD: Golden Rule Fairness and
the dignity of persons
[Distinctions between Manipulative Persuasion, Respectful
(Non-manipulative)
Persuasion, and
Paternalism as a half-way house between them. This introduces the
Kantian notion of
persons as equal, rational and free.)
6. Institutions and the Six Step
(or Star of David)
Model for
Ethical Decision-making.
7. Ethical development -- at some point, I
will introduce
material
from the work of Kohlberg and Gilligan
and my own work.
8. Then a move to the meta-level
examining Red of community
(utilitarian theories) and the Gold of persons
including human rights
and extending the discourse to other beings of intrinsic worth (Kantian
and
rights-based theories)
and the Green of responsibility (response-ability) linked with virtue
theory
and
moral development.
Currently in Ethics and Decision Making, I am using an approach
that
utilizes the following four texts, in the order below:
John G. Sullivan, Living Large: Transformative Work
at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality
Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer,
Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers, Presence: Human Purpose and the
Field of the Future
Zander
and Zander, The Art of Possibility
James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Theory
a) Primary Criteria for Ethics
b) Our
Approach
to Philosophical Ethics (Includes some obstacles to ethics
plus
comparisons of Philosophical Ethics to Religious Ethics and Law)
c) Ethics According to the "Three Houses" Model
d) Material on the Seven
Domains
-- Note: More recently, I am using a simplified version of these domain
--
highlighting the Planetary Domain, the Institutional Doamin and the
Interpersonal Domain -- and noting for each surface and core levels.
See section on this page devoted to The Paradigm Conspiracy.
e) Notes on Practice -- the
Fundamental Distinction and
the Notions of Small Mind and Large Mind
f) How our Ways of Understanding and Responding can be too small
g) A Comparison of Minimal
Ethics and Aspirational Ethics -- Two
Iinterpretations
of the Traffic Light Model [Note:since Fall
2002, I have passed out in class a slightly different way to
think of minimal and aspriational ethics.]
h) Four Levels
of Morality -- a Look at Ethical Development from a Cultural Perspective
i) Remarks on Cultural and Ethical Relativism
D. MATERIAL ON ETHICS FROM A WESTERN PERSPECTIVE --
Especially
Ethical Decision Making on the Institutional Level and Above:
1) Manipulative
Persuasion,
Non-Manipulative (or Ethically Respectful) Persuasion,
and the Half-Way House called Paternalism
2) Material on the
TRAFFIC
LIGHT Model + on the Nature of Instititutions
together
with definitions of Racism, Sexism, Ageism and Speciesism
a) The GOLD of the Traffic Light Model --
Reflections on PERSONS -- material on Kant and
others
b)
The
RED of the Traffic Light Model --
Reflection
on COMMUNITY and the COMMON GOOD --
material on Bentham, Mill and beyond
3) The STAR OF DAVID or SIX STEP Model for Making Ethical Policy Decisions
4) Two Views of Moral Development:
the
work of Lawrence Kohlberg and the work of Carol Gilligan
5) Notes on Principled Living and
Principled
Negotiations
6) United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights + United States Constitution Bill of Rights
E. MATERIAL ON ETHICS FROM AN EASTERN PERSPECTIVE:
1) Eightfold Path and Shortened Form of the Five Wonderful Precepts
2) The Eightfold Path as
a
Spiral Path -- How the Path Appears Differently at
Different Stages of Our Journey
a)
Paradigm
Conspiracy -- A Bird's Eye View
b) Domains,
Surface and Depth
Levels
within Domains and the Wholeness Principle
c) Paradigm Analysis and the Twelve Step Modelseeing the universe story in its surface physicaSOME NOTES on the book The Paradigm Conspiracy by Breton and Largenta) Paradigm Conspiracy -- A Bird's Eye View
b) Domains, Surface and Depth Levels within Domains and the Wholeness Principlec) Paradigm Analysis and the Twelve Step Modelseeing the universe story in its surface physical and meaning dimensions
and orienting to the wholeness principle at its depth;
seeing the institutional story in its surface organizational, behavioral and meaning/value dimensions
and orienting to the wholeness principle at the institution's depth purpose/ vision/ task;
seeing each "individual-embeddual" story in his or her surface bodily, behavioral and
meaning/value dimensions
and orienting to the wholeness principle at his or her depth.
d) Notes given on February 28, 2005 for review of some sections of Paradigm Conspiracy.l and meaning dimensions
and orienting to the wholeness principle at its depth;
seeing the institutional story in its surface organizational, behavioral and meaning/value dimensions
and orienting to the wholeness principle at the institution's depth purpose/ vision/ task;
seeing each "individual-embeddual" story in his or her surface bodily, behavioral and
meaning/value dimensions
and orienting to the wholeness principle at his or her depth.
Essay -- Plagiarism and the Challenge of
Essay
Writing: Learning from our Students
by Dr. Janice Newton, Department of Political Science, York University
This essay accompanied a presentation at the June
1995 annual conference of the American Associationb of Higher
Education,
Boston, MA. Elon College was granted permission by the author to
share this essay. The essay coame to us from the Center for
Academic
Integrity, an organization housed at Duke University. Elon joined
this organization in the Fall of 1999.
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