Ethics

Ethics is a discipline that asks how people ought to live their lives. No one today can avoid asking themselves how they should live at a time when traditional value systems have been left shaken in the wake of advancing globalization. Students who choose to study at the Department of Ethics learn potential answers to this question through theoretical frameworks (Kantianism, consequentialism, theory of justice, virtue ethics, natural law theory, and metaethics, among others) and gain an ability to read and understand primary sources for themselves.

Keio has six tenured faculty members dedicated to the Department of Ethics. Traditionally, many of our faculty members have expertise in the schools of thought and histories of modern Germany, France, and Britain. But the Department of Ethics also offers a wide variety of courses that cater to broader student interests. The department also places an emphasis on education and research in applied ethics, which addresses contemporary social issues in a new light by examining bioethics, environmental ethics, information ethics, business ethics, and global ethics, among others. It also addresses ethics in terms of schools of religious thought, in particular Christianity, as well as in terms of law and politics.