一、課程目的和設計：
本課程的主要目的希望使同學瞭解，如何用哲學的方式處理道德問題，從而對日常生活中道德判斷和道德規範的本質，有進一層的認識和掌握。課程內容是介紹各種不同的倫理學理論，主要包括規範倫理學、後設倫理學、政治哲學。第一學期研討規範倫理學的問題，一般而言規範倫理學可以分為三大類主張：目的論(teleological theory)、義務論(deontological theory)和德行倫理學(virtue ethics)，由於這三大類主張中仍包含不同的理論，所以只能介紹其中具代表性的主張，因此本課程在目的論的學說中，將介紹利己主義(egoism)和效益主義(utilitarianism)；義務論只介紹直覺主義和康德的倫理學說；德行論則介紹亞里斯多德的觀點。
第二學期的重點是後設倫理學和政治哲學，在後設倫理學的部分將處理有關道德語言意義的理論，其中包括莫耳(G. E. Moore)的主張、情緒論和規約論；此外，道德相對論和道德客觀主義也是後設倫理學所要介紹的課題，再後會處理「為什麼要有道德」這個亙古的問題。至於政治哲學的部分要處理的問題是：正義和權利，我們將介紹羅爾斯(John Rawls)和諾次克(Robert Nozick)的正義理論，以及德沃金(Ronald Dworkin)的權利論。
由於倫理學理論的發展相當豐富，以一學年的時間我們只能將重要的倫理學理論做簡單的介紹，所以許多非常重要的應用倫理學話題，並沒有辦法包含在本課程的教學內容中。

二、教材：Louis P. Pojman, Ethical Theory, 2nd ed. Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1995.

三、上課和評分方式：
本課以講授為主，成績計算是期中考和期末考兩次筆試各佔50%。

Ethics 9012
Ethics is also known as moral philosophy. It is related to the problems such as “How one should live?” and “What kinds of person that one should be?” As matter of fact, ethical problems are dealing with normative questions about human conducts which are central to the meaning as well as the understanding of human life. The content of Ethics can be divided into three parts: normative ethics, meta-ethics, and applied ethics. The subject of normative ethics is about the rightness or wrongness of our conduct. There are three distinctive theories have been developed in this field, namely, teleological theory, deontological theory, and virtue ethics. The problems meta-ethics tries to solve are about the meaning of ethical terms such as, “right”, “wrong”, “good”, “bad”, the justification of moral judgments, and the nature of morality, etc. As for the application of ethical theories to daily life problems such as, abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, etc., cannot be included in this course due to the limit of time.