PHIL20240 Applied Ethics

Academic Year 2022/2023

Syllabus: Applied Ethics 20240

This course will examine a range of perennial ethical problems using the crisis of accelerating climate change as our focal point. One of the most fundamental ethical questions we can ask is what do we owe each other? What do we owe those suffering hunger, poverty, and injustice? How do these duties apply to future generations? Do we have a duty to open our borders to those escaping persecution or climate change? To what degree are we willing to radically alter the way we live to preserve ‘our’ way of life?

While these questions have been around for a long time, our post-COVID world seems particularly rife with anxiety and uncertainty. Will the world ever ‘go back to normal’? What kind of career trajectory or life plan can we reasonably expect to pursue? Beyond any preferred normative viewpoint, questions relating to which diet is the best to maintain or the preservation of habitats for non-human life, carry added existential weight. It is no longer enough to ask, “How ought we to live?” We must now view all human activities through an ecological prism in order to safeguard the very possibility of human society. As a species, we are more powerful than ever before, and yet as individuals we often feel helpless in the face of novel zoonotic illnesses, fragile supply chains, and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. However bleak things may look to us at present, it is vital to face these threats directly while strengthening our capacities to think critically and compassionately.