Moral Philosophy (2013/2014)

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.

Present-day economic crisis has bluntly put us in front of our responsibility to rethink and readdress our relation towards nature. Our development model looks indeed unsustainable because the very idea at its core - that nature is a reservoir of raw materials at our disposal to be exploited endlessly - is unsustainable. Yet such notion of nature, far from being modern, is deeply rooted in the philosophical past of Western civilization. The course will sketch the history of the Western idea of nature before focusing on the perspective that nowadays seems more radical in proposing a way out from the present exploitation model: the economy of decrease by Latouche.

Texts:

- Audio files of the lessons;
- Jeremy Rifkin, "Ecocidio".
- Serge Latouche, "L'invenzione dell'economia".
- Id., un testo a scelta tra "Obiettivo decrescita" e "La scommessa della decrescita".

The final test consists of an oral discussion of the authors, the texts and the subjects discussed in the course.