July 28th, 2025
I finished my summer Ethics course this week, and to wrap it up we had to film a short video about what we learned. I feel so strongly about taking this class that I wanted to share it with you, too. Feel free to respectfully debate me anytime.
"I had a fantastic time doing a deep dive into ethics this summer, and by 'fantastic' I mean I have become an insufferable human being who is terrible at dinner parties.
I already enjoyed philosophy quite a bit before this class, but to be allowed and required to read and watch and write about so much over the course of eight weeks was – and I’m biased – something I think every citizen of our country should do at least once every decade or so. One of my favorite parts of all this is actually very silly. I love how we got to know a philosopher just long enough to go, 'Hey, this is a great theory' before – BAM – we were introduced to all the reasons why it was a bad or incomplete theory. That’s great training for how we should approach any idea, new or old.
This summer, I got to reexamine everything I think and then really ask myself why – and sometimes I didn’t like the answer. I also got to articulate why I didn’t agree with what someone else had to say – and they didn’t like the answer. There were a lot of disliked answers. But this was all in the service of having robust, thoughtful, civil discussions with the people in my life, which is what we should all be trying to do today.
It’s interesting that I would find a thing or two in each ethical theory that I already believed in, and I realized that that’s how this works. We take what’s useful to us and throw away the rest, and try to explain to others why what we keep is important.
Speaking of politics broadly, I read an Atlantic article earlier this summer about Alasdair MacIntyre, and how America has become so fractured because we’re not speaking the same moral language. We don’t have a framework to agree upon. So we have an ethical crisis because we’ve basically ignored traditional virtue ethics in favor of our individuality and our emotions. It’s left us with no moral legs to stand on, and we sound incoherent to each other when we speak or, more likely, when we shout. Having a basic knowledge of ethics would go a long way in helping us find a common ground and a common moral language again.
I’m so glad to have had this class at this time not just for my own sake, but for the tools it’s given me to help people figure out their own ethical frameworks, instead of parroting talking points or headlines or engaging in one of my favorite overused phrases, cognitive dissonance. So thank you to everyone in this class who stayed engaged and thank you to Wes for organizing such a well-rounded course. This is time I used very valuably and I can’t wait to do it again in a decade."
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