84702 - ETHICAL ISSUES AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Academic Year 2024/2025

  • Docente: Elena Irrera
  • Credits: 8
  • SSD: SPS/01
  • Language: English

Learning outcomes

Globalization dramatically changed the environment of political and economic activity, widening the context of social action and speeding up its pace. This course intends to tackle the new ethical issues inherent in a globalized world of social change from a theoretical perspective, without neglecting the historical side. At the end of the course the student a) has a deeper appreciation of the new ethical issues facing mankind in an era of globalization; b) has knowledge of the most interesting contemporary theories of the just society; c) is capable of historically situating the current developments in society.

Course contents

The course will address some of the main issues related to current geopolitical circumstances: the one of the just society and the challenge of relativism within multicultural societies; national and international populisms; environmental ethical issues; epistemology of fake news (and possible attempts at regulating that phenomenon); the ethical and political challenges of artificial intelligence.


The course (which has a total duration of 40 hours) is divided into two thematic parts. The first will address some authors and philosophical-political aspects that allow us to frame the above-mentioend ethical issues, which will be critically addressed in the second part of the module. Particular attention will be devoted to the following doctrines:


1) Liberalism (with special reference to the theories of John Rawls)


2) Utilitarianism


3) Kantian-type deontology


4) Egalitarianism

Readings/Bibliography

Texts for the first part of the module

Compulsory for the oral exam:

Entries from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/

 

Students are also expected to study one of the following authors and/or themes) for the oral exam:

 

1) Selected passages from John Rawls' works:

* A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Revised edition, 1999.

* Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Paperback edition, 1996; Second edition, 2005.

* The Law of Peoples, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

 

2) Luck Egalitarianism

  • Elizabeth S. Anderson, "What is the Point of Equality?" Ethics (1999), pp. 287–337.
  • Susan L. Hurley, Justice, Luck and Knowledge (2003).

 

3)

Other works

Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2007).

Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2011).

Peter Singer, One World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).

Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

 

Texts for the Second part of the module (non compulsory, but useful for paper writing):

C. de la Torre (ed. by) (2019). Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, London and New York: Routledge

L. Floridi and M.R. Taddeo (2014). The Ethics of Information Warfare, New York: Springer.

L. Floridi (2023). The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Principles, Challenges, and Opportunities, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

S. Bernecker et al. (eds.),(2021). The Epistemology of Fake News, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

N. Levy (2021). Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

A more detailed bibliography will be supplied at the beginning of the course

Teaching methods

Frontal classes, with the support of powerpoint presentations, in the course of which students will be encouraged to actively participate through discussion and expression of personal views over the addressed issues. 

Assessment methods

1) A paper devoted to one of the subjects treated in the second part of the module (max. length 15.000 characters, footnotes and bibliography excluded).   

2) A short oral exam on one of the authors examined in the first part of the module.  

Teaching tools

Powerpoint presentations and online material will be supplied for each class.

Office hours

See the website of Elena Irrera