Moral Philosophy (2012/2013)

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Course code
4S00765
Name of lecturer
Carlo Chiurco
Coordinator
Carlo Chiurco
Number of ECTS credits allocated
6
Academic sector
M-FIL/03 - MORAL PHILOSOPHY
Language of instruction
Italian
Location
VERONA
Period
Sem. IIB dal Apr 22, 2013 al Jun 9, 2013.

Lesson timetable

Learning outcomes

Moral philosophy investigates the principles that either have guided or guide (or rather should guide) human actions in history, be they the acts of individuals or the choices of a whole society. Through the analysis of the most important ethical questions, especially those that more directly affect our time, students are expected to acquire a good degree of critical awareness about the main subjects of moral philosophy, thus enabling them to deal with the main moral issues of our time.

Syllabus

Seduction and its power

Seduction looks like one of the driving forces behind our society. Economy, for instance, relies almost entirely on the seductive power of advertising. Politics as well has been increasingly tempted to recur to seductive ways to lure voters, thus transforming representative democracy into a far more personalized game, where people vote for leaders rather than political parties. And if a leader is also a media mogul, the chances to plunge society into a sort of soft authoritarianism get stronger and stronger. But seduction is also something that heavily affects our individual lives and human relations within them. Just think of the enormous importance of social networks and chat lines in order to meet people – both phenomena fuelled by an incredibly strong seductive force, such as the will to show ourselves off for others. And the rush to take part in reality shows simply makes Warhol’s prophecy about everybody having 15 minutes of fame become truer. Seduction looks like an entirely modern phenomenon, born in early 1600 together with, and thanks to, modern subjectivism. It is therefore not casual that modernity presents us with the most striking examples of the power of seduction: Casanova and Don Giovanni. We will show how modernity transformed seduction, in itself a natural phenomenon, into something fully distorted, and made it the very opposite of ethics.

Assessment methods and criteria

The exam will consist of an oral examination.

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