NEH Enduring Questions Course on "Where Does Morality Come From?"
FAIN: AQ-50351-11
Arizona Board of Regents (Tucson, AZ 85721-0073)
Michael B. Gill (Project Director: September 2010 to April 2014)
The development of an undergraduate course on the question, Where does morality come from?
The question of where morality comes from is as enduring as reflection on human life itself. Because moral judgment is so central to how humans think about themselves, reflection on the origins of morality reaches into every area of the study of human life. The question of morality’s origins thus plays a starring role in fields such as psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and religion — as well as being at the heart of many of the greatest narrative works. In the course I propose to teach, we will explore five different answers that have been given to this question: that morality comes from God, from culture, from reason, from self-interest, and from emotion. We will use narratives as our central text