The course contributes to the wider educational objective of the CdS by providing the appropriate historical and conceptual tools for understanding the fundamental themes and authors of the Western ethical tradition. The course also introduces students to the reading of some fundamental texts of this tradition, providing the essential tools for their analysis, and their historical contextualization, for framing the salient issues addressed in them and for their critical discussion. In this way, at the end of the course, the students will acquire (1) the fundamental knowledge relative to the different moral doctrines; (2) they will develop their own capacity of understanding; (3) they will develop the necessary skills to orient themself within the debates characterizing contemporary moral philosophy in the context of the different "applied ethics" (nature and environment, bioethics, technoscience, information and communication, economy and work, multiculturalism, etc.).