PHIL3089: Saints, Heroes, and Altruists

Students will learn about extraordinary people who have made progress towards solving “the world’s complex problems”, with a particular focus on problems of suffering, conflict, oppression, and war. The honorees and prizewinners we will study are some of those most admired, innovative, effective, and awe-inspiring figures of the last century. Students will think for themselves about the personal characteristics, circumstances, opportunities, and privileges that seem to contribute to someone’s ability to make a difference in the world. This critical appraisal will also include examination of honorees’ flaws and failures, and of what they sacrificed in pursuing their projects. Students will look to role models and exemplars as templates for how to live an impactful life, while at the same time developing a healthy skepticism for hero-worship and an open-minded curiosity about different ways of living a morally significant life. We’ll examine not only success stories but also cautionary tales, like Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried, young academic standouts who purportedly wanted to make the world a better place but instead ended up in prison for fraud. Ultimately, students will leave the course with an ability to articulate their own values and to better align their post-graduation life plans and projects with those values.

Most of us want to be a good person and find stories of saints and heroes awe-inspiring. But what does it take to be truly morally extraordinary? In this class we will work together to try to define and measure the qualities needed to be called an altruist, hero, saint, or peacemaker, and test our theories against real-life examples. We will study winners of the Carnegie Hero Medal, Holocaust rescuers, humanitarians, and famous moral exemplars from law, medicine, politics, and culture. Then, using what we’ve learned, students will identify people around the world who are possible candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize and deliberate together over who, if anyone, we as a group should nominate, with a special focus on identifying candidates who might otherwise be overlooked. Students and instructor will then collaboratively research and write one or more official nominations to submit to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo, Norway. (Professors of Philosophy are among those eligible to submit nominations, which are kept under seal for 50 years.) 

We will adopt a critical stance, always interrogating our assumptions, both about morality and about people. Did you know that some people think Gandhi and Mother Teresa weren’t so good after all, and that the Nobel Peace Prize has a controversial history? Did you know that altruistic kidney donors were once assumed to be mentally ill? Have you heard that a movement to encourage more people to improve the world through charitable donations, called Effective Altruism, is facing growing backlash? And what should we make of MrBeast, the YouTube star who got rich filming himself doing good deeds? Or of Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried, smart young entrepreneurs who said they wanted to save the world but ended up in prison for fraud? We will confront the tensions and paradoxes head-on, asking questions like: How much must one sacrifice for their moral pursuits? Is it ok to break rules in the service of broader moral goals? Is it narcissistic to want to be morally excellent? How can we tell a moral exemplar from a moral fraud, and tell righteous indignation from sanctimony? What if the moral crusader is wrong about what is right? Who, if anyone, is truly worthy of moral admiration? Can a single person really change the world? Students will also examine these questions in the context of their own lives and career aspirations, reflecting on what it means to be a good person in the modern world.