Candle Conferences on demand lecture series for students of A Level Religious Studies are unique. As always, the lectures are pacy and engaging, designed to provoke deep thought and further discussion and debate. Each lecture is accompanied by detailed student resources, providing an overview of the content, useful scholars and quotations, suggestions for extra reading and learning activities. Overall, the lecture series offers 4-5 hours of video content accompanied by 40+ pages of digital resources.

Being Good

Exploring content specified by ALL ENGLISH EXAMINATION BOARDS, “Being Good” will take students on a “deep dive” into Normative Ethics, helping them to analyse, evaluate and make informed, well-reasoned academic judgements about different approaches to moral decision-making.

1) Natural Law

This first lecture will explore and evaluate Natural Law as an approach to decision-making, tracing its development from the work of Aristotle through St. Thomas Aquinas to its role in shaping Roman Catholic Moral Philosophy and then modern versions in the work of John Finnis and Bernard Hoose. Special attention will be paid to the relationship between Natural Law and Virtue Ethics as well as to how Conscience relates.

2) Kantian Ethics

The second lecture will move on to consider Kantian Ethics, another absolutist, deontological approach to decision-making but with a very different understanding of what being fully human and good consists in. The strengths of Kantian Ethics will be outlined with reference to the work of modern Kantian moral philosophers and then the weaknesses of the Kantian approach will be explored and evaluated.

3) Utilitarianism

The third lecture will turn to Utilitarianism, which at first seems to be a completely different approach to decision making, but which turns out to owe something to Kantian Ethics at least in versions presented by John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick and Peter Singer. Particular attention will be paid to the extent to which the problem of prediction undermines Act and Weak Rule Utilitarianism and the extent to which Utilitarianism is compatible with Christian Ethics.

4) Situation Ethics

The final lecture will outline and evaluate Joseph Fletcher’s attempt to develop a “New Morality” making Christian love the end in a consequentialist ethic. It will then consider whether Joseph Fletcher’s version of Situation Ethics is really compatible with Christian Moral Principles and how it compares with other Christian approaches to decision-making that are situational and prioritise agape-love, such as those of William Temple, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich.

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To Book

• A school licence to access the Being Good lecture series for the academic year 2022-23 costs £50, which includes the right to show the videos in class and copy the student resources.
• Individual students or teachers can purchase access for £5, but this only includes personal use of the videos and resources

With Candle you get:

• Up-to-date scholarly content made engaging and tailored to the real needs of A Level students.
• Sessions and resources designed by practicing teachers with a record of engaging students of all abilities.
• Easy, secure online bookings with no fees to pay.

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