Literature, ethics and authority

Master

In Maynard (USA)

Price on request

Description

  • Type

    Master

  • Location

    Maynard (USA)

  • Start date

    Different dates available

Our subject is the ethics of leadership, an examination of the principles appealed to by executive authority when questions arise about its sources and its legitimacy. Most treatments of this subject resort to case-studies in order to illustrate the application of ethical principles to business situations, but our primary emphasis will be upon classic works of imaginative literature, which convey more directly than case-studies the ethical pressures of decision-making. Readings will include works by Shakespeare, Sophocles, Shaw, E.M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Henrik Ibsen, among others. Topics to be discussed include the sources of authority, the management of consensus, the ideal of vocation, the ethics of deception, the morality of expediency, the requirements of hierarchy, the virtues and vices of loyalty, the relevance of ethical principles in extreme situations.

Facilities

Location

Start date

Maynard (USA)
See map
02139

Start date

Different dates availableEnrolment now open

Questions & Answers

Add your question

Our advisors and other users will be able to reply to you

Who would you like to address this question to?

Fill in your details to get a reply

We will only publish your name and question

Reviews

Subjects

  • Materials
  • Ethics
  • Works
  • Leadership
  • Executive

Course programme

Lectures: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session


We will supplement our readings in imaginative literature with brief excerpts from important works in the tradition of philosophical ethics (by Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant). These texts are also of classic stature, parts of the repertoire of educated argument about the sources and legitimate aims of executive authority and valuable points of reference in conversations about ethics in professional life. The readings also include excerpts from texts concerned with the nature of corporate leadership and brief case studies reflecting the ways in which common ethical dilemmas typically arise in the course of corporate management.


The aim of the course is not to strengthen the student's ethical character or to provide a set of handy decision-procedures for ethical conduct but rather to develop familiarity with the ins and outs of a fair range of ethical concepts, to whose use in judgment, it is assumed, everyone is already committed. The governing view behind the selection of materials to be read and discussed is that our characters are already ethical to the core, but that our arguments with ourselves about rival courses of action are perplexed by the unsystematic nature of the ethical principles to which all of us in large measure subscribe. Our course of study takes as its assumption that ethical principles are unsystematic by nature. This goes to explain why decision-procedures for ethical conduct are unavailing. In brief, since our ethical commitments do not "add up", the need to honor one principle (or set of principles) in our conduct frequently entails betraying another. The readings and discussion aim at exploring the extent to which this condition can be made tractable, drawing largely upon the two main traditions of philosophic ethics in Western culture-the one that deals with ethical values, the other with duties and the satisfaction of obligations.


The subject meets once a week for two hours. Each session begins with a lecture of varying length, but usually running for twenty-minutes to half an hour, although the lectures of the first two meetings will be somewhat longer. The rest of the session is devoted to class-discussion of the materials assigned for the session. There are no break-out sessions, but groups of students will be appointed from time to time to present a view of some of the materials during the last twenty minutes of the session. Participation in discussion is essential to the life of the class and the force and cogency of students' remarks will have a marked influence on grades. Much of the grade will also depend upon the quality of the two written assignments required by the course: a mid-term paper (running from five to seven pages) and a final paper (running from ten to twelve pages). The papers will each deal with some aspect of the readings and discussion; topics may be invented by the students but an extensive list of suggested topics will be circulated two weeks in advance of each paper's due date for those students who require it.


Our meetings will follow the course outlined but each week's meeting will determine how much of the unit under discussion will be completed during its session and how much carried forward into the next meeting. It is assumed, in other words, that some units will take more than one session (although never so much as two) and some will take less. Indented authors and titles indicate materials subsidiary to the main readings. The readings will average 60 pages per week.


Don't show me this again


This is one of over 2,200 courses on OCW. Find materials for this course in the pages linked along the left.


MIT OpenCourseWare is a free & open publication of material from thousands of MIT courses, covering the entire MIT curriculum.


No enrollment or registration. Freely browse and use OCW materials at your own pace. There's no signup, and no start or end dates.


Knowledge is your reward. Use OCW to guide your own life-long learning, or to teach others. We don't offer credit or certification for using OCW.


Made for sharing. Download files for later. Send to friends and colleagues. Modify, remix, and reuse (just remember to cite OCW as the source.)


Learn more at Get Started with MIT OpenCourseWare


Literature, ethics and authority

Price on request