Social Ethics (2009/2010)

Learning outcomes

Being a branch of moral philosophy, the reflection on social ethics is concerned with the moral behaviour of individuals as it developes within the social-historical context in which it is manifested. It aims to create a public space of opinion where the confrontation among the individuals’ different private moral notions may eventually result in more largely shared choices.

Friendship and Reciprocality
In the last ten years, the notion of Reciprocality has quickly become one of the most debated in moral philosophy. The course will focus on its most critical and contradictory aspects, which appear especially when it is examined from the perspective of some basic ethical concepts such as justice, identity and citizenship. In order to highlight the present meaning of such critical aspects of the notion of Reciprocality, the confrontation with the chapters in Aristotle’s Ethics that deals with the notion of friendship seems particularly useful.


Course texts:
G. Acocella, Etica sociale, Guida;
E. Pulcini, Il sé mimetico e il falso riconoscimento, in Pensare la società, a cura di M. Calloni et al., Carocci, pp. 105-125;
Aristotele, Etica Nicomachea, Laterza o BUR, libri VIII e IX.

The exam will consist in a written test with open-answer questions.