This course introduces resources in theology and ethical theory through which to explore the interplay between embodiment and the determination of the moral self.  The course particularly  considers Aristotelian, Kantian, Augustinian, and Foucauldian theory about how our bodies figure in moral reflection.  The course also considers moral problems about embodied living, ranging from reflection on war and peace stimulated by narratives of the soldier’s body and the maternal body, to reflection on race and gender stimulated by analyses of commodified beauty standards.  Prerequisites: BTS-T.  Open to juniors and seniors, and to sophomores by permission of instructor.
 

 “Ethics and Embodiment” focuses on the complicated interplay between embodiment and the emergence of what I will call “the moral self.”  In this course, the moral self is the self that decides and acts in light of some specifiable values.  It is produced in part by systematic reflection, but also by the accumulated effects of a theoretically unlimited range of cultural, political, aesthetic, and commercial influences (including some influences that shape the body directly, and shape the moral self precisely by shaping the body).  Thinking about the significance of the body for moral thought raises many  problems of interest in this course.
 
First, what forces should (or do) shape the self that acts and decides?  Is the moral self produced by reasoning abstractly about alternative courses of action?  Or by habitually performing good acts?  Or is the moral self really produced by the exercise of anonymous systems of power that create in us distinct propensities even before we begin to reason or evaluate?
 
Second, in the history of systematic reflection on moral questions the body itself has posed a persistent problem.  Is our particular bodily experience to be transcended in the formation of moral judgments?  Or should bodily experience be consulted and valued?  And what is the moral value of bodily experience?  Is the body a site of corruption and temptation?  Or a site of pleasure and goodness?
 
Third, is the body relevant for theological reflection, whether as an obstacle to the knowledge of God, or as a key metaphor for the knowledge of God?
 
And fourth, how do contemporary practices of the body reflect traditional beliefs?  How do they reflect commercial pressures?  Can they be analyzed by conventional ethical categories?

Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
Sallie McFague, The Body of God
Sarah Ruddick, Maternal Thinking
(photocopies including excerpts from Plato, Phaedo, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; Augustine, City of God; Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations; and other texts)

1. Determination of the Moral Self: What shapes the Self that acts and decides?

a. Rational Reflection
b. Habituation to Virtuous Practices
c. Disciplines

a. As a source of moral knowledge

i Distraction/impediment
ii Unavoidable resource

b. As a site of moral experiences

i Site of corruption temptation
ii Site of pleasure and goodness

c. As an infinitely malleable cultural construction

a. Maternal Experience as the root of a peace politics
b. The Abused Body as a root of war strategy

a. Slenderness
b. Racialized beauty standards

1. Participation in Class Discussion
2. Daily brief essays addressing assigned questions.
3. Preparation of a web portfolio.

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