Freshman seminar. The practice of making judgments about right and wrong, of ascribing praise and blame, of deliberating about what one should and should not do -- in short, the entire network of commitments, duties, and customs that makes up that peculiar institution known as "morality" -- is at once the most firmly grounded and the most problematic of human institutions. On the one hand, morality (or something like it) seems an inevitable and perhaps inescapable component of human life. On the other hand, all attempts to find an ultimate basis for morality -- whether it be in the will of God, the dictates of science, the authority of self-evident truths, or the whimsies of subjective desires -- have met with failure. Where does this leave us? What should we do? Is there even such a thing as "what we should do"? Or must there be such a thing, even if we don’t yet know what its ultimate basis is? By drawing on the works of Plato, Hume, Moore, Mackie, Camus, Korsgaard, and others, this seminar will explore a variety of challenges for any attempt at explaining what morality is and what grounds it. Along the way, seminar members will learn how to carefully read a philosophical text, and how to convincingly argue (both in writing and in person) for a philosophical position.