UCL - Ethics - Society

[THEO1312]

[45h] 4 credits

This course is taught in the 1st & 2d semester.

This two-yearly course is taught in 2008-2009, 2010-2011,...

Teacher(s): Walter Lesch

Language: French

Level: First

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

By the end of this course, the student should be able to:
- articulate questions regarding norms and values in institutional contexts;
- indicate the ethical implications of social sciences and law;
- work with the key concepts of social philosophy;
- understand the role of religions within theories of justice and concrete commitments.

Main themes

To meet these objectives, the course is broken down as follows:
- (Module A: ethics and society) a general introduction to ethical reflection on social matters; conceptual work is combined with case studies (the question of sustainable development is addressed among other topics);
- (Module B: social ethics and religion) the influence of religious traditions, in particular Christian social teaching, on theories and real life in a pluralistic and multicultural society.

Content and teaching methods

This course is the basic module of the social ethics programme and will be followed at the master level by more specific offers dealing with political ethical and economic ethics. The introductory course takes human rights as a starting point in order to reconstruct conflicting concepts of liberty and dignity. An historical presentation of relevant documents from Christian social teaching will be combined with the study of real cases chosen among today's social issues.

In 2004-2005, 2006-2007

The course is a general introduction into social ethics. The first part is about the normative dimension of general theory of contemporary society and takes into consideration recent publications on social philosophy and social sciences. The second part is dedicated more specifically to the role of religions in the construction of social cohesion and in suggesting solutions to the great challenges of globalisation, unemployment, human rights etc.

The students will participate actively by presenting short reports on some aspects of the theoretical topics and of the case studies.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

without object