UCL - Economic, Political and Social Ethics

[ESPO1321]

[20h + 10h] 3 credits

This course is taught in the 1st semester.

Teacher(s): Philippe Van Parijs(coord.)

Language: French

Level: First

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

Aims

This course gives students a synthetic and critical outline of the principal contemporary approaches to economic and social ethics. In this way, and through the effective use of analytical tools with which they are provided, the course aims to help students to take a critical and informed position towards the ethical issues which arise in the broad field covered by the economic, social and political sciences.

Main themes

Inevitably perhaps within economic and social debate, there is constant confusion between empirical comments, theoretical statements and value judgments. The course tries to teach students how to clarify this debate by distinguishing the various types of question, by clarifying the criteria which, for each type, should enable them to decide between competing positions, and examines how the value judgments which underlie the debate can themselves be the subject of a rigorous discussion.

Content and teaching methods

Content
1) the first half of the course presents and situate the conceptions of the good society (and of the economy) that one can find in the approaches utilitarian, libertarienne, analytic and liberal-egalitarian Marxist. She/it also situates more succinctly the" critical theory ", the" communautarisme ", the "post-modrnisme" and the social enseignment of the church.
2) the second half of the course approaches a particular theme, that changes of year in year: for example" social Justice and feminism ", "The migrations ", "The linguistic justice ", "social Justice and care of health ", etc.

Method
1) the first half of the course articulates on one sequences of expositions of the teacher, but wants to be very interactive: it is about thinking together about the difficulties that the different variants of each of the approaches explored raise.
2) the second half articulates on a "sequence of proceedings carefully prepared by teams of students and aiming to mobilize the approaches introduced in the first half of the course in order to approach the concrete ethical questions illustrating the theme of the year.

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

Prerequisite: Students should ideally have some basic notions of economic culture, gained for example through an introductory course in Political Economics.
Evaluation: The evaluation is based on a short individually written text (written as an extension of the team work) and an oral interview which takes this text as a starting-point.