Birmingham, United Kingdom

Philosophy of Religion and Ethics

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: humanities
Qualification: MA
Kind of studies: full-time studies, part-time studies
Studies online Studies online
Master of Arts (MA)
University website: www.birmingham.ac.uk
Ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. The term ethics derives from Ancient Greek ἠθικός (ethikos), from ἦθος (ethos), meaning 'habit, custom'. The branch of philosophy axiology comprises the sub-branches of ethics and aesthetics, each concerned with values.
Philosophy
Philosophy (from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally "love of wisdom") is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was probably coined by Pythagoras (c. 570–495 BCE). Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. Classic philosophical questions include: Is it possible to know anything and to prove it? What is most real? Philosophers also pose more practical and concrete questions such as: Is there a best way to live? Is it better to be just or unjust (if one can get away with it)? Do humans have free will?
Religion
There is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. It may be defined as a cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, world views, texts, sanctified places, prophesies, ethics, or organizations, that claims to relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.
Ethics
Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself.
Bertrand Russell, in Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (1918), Ch. 6: "On the Scientific Method in Philosophy", p. 108
Ethics
An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat shop or the concentration camp and the death march.
Simon Blackburn, Being Good (2001)
Ethics
The most optimistic ethics have all begun by emphasizing the element of failure involved in the condition of man; without failure, no ethics; for a being who, from the very start, would be an exact co-incidence with himself, in a perfect plenitude, the notion of having-to-be would have no meaning. One does not offer an ethics to a God. It is impossible to propose any to man if one defines him as nature, as something given. The so-called psychological or empirical ethics manage to establish themselves only by introducing surreptitiously some flaw within the manthing which they have first defined.
Simone de Beauvoir, in The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
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