Fortgeschrittenenseminar "Themes and Methods of Applied Ethics"

24. Oktober 2016 bis 6. Februar 2017 | montags 14 bis 16 Uhr c.t. | MKE | Raum M210

In this advanced seminar + essay course we will be reading influential anglophone papers in the field of "applied ethics".

We will address a choice of diverse issues such as torture and terrorism, euthanasia, disaster ethics, and biotechnological human enhancement interventions. We will learn about normative ethics in practice and occasionally we will look into neighbouring disciplines such as political philosophy or moral psychology.

The purpose of this seminar is twofold: First, participants will familiarise themselves with some of the major themes and methods of the contemporary debate in applied ethics. Second, joint discussions and subsequent essay writing will allow students to further practice their academic skills of analysing, developing and defending arguments.

We will be reading texts by: Fritz Allhoff, Elizabeth Anderson, Alan Dershowitz, Michael Sandel, Peter Singer, Judith J. Thomson, Thomas Nagel and others. Basic knowledge in moral philosophy will be helpful in this "Fortgeschrittenenseminar".

Students will have to dedicate several hours every week to prepare for the class. They will be asked to participate actively in class and give an oral presentation of one of the papers. Students may either write four short essays (ca. 2.000 words each) during the term or a “Hausarbeit” (ca. 7.500 words) during the term break.

Registration

In order to allow for intense discussions in class, the number of students is limited to 25. If you are interested in attending the seminar, please send an e-mail to mke@lmu.de until 14th October 2016 to let me know in a sentence or two why you would want to attend the seminar.