Aims

By the end of the course, the student should:
- know about the most important texts and procedures concerning the protection of human rights;
- be able to work on the basis of the official documents of Christian social teaching and have an appropriate understanding of institutions committed to the promotion of social justice;
- be able to adopt a well-argued position on the role of theology in matters of justice;
- be able to formulate concrete projects and to evaluate them critically.

Main themes

In order to reach these goals, the course offers an introduction to important aspects Christian ethics in dialogue with social sciences. The course is based on the critical study of theories and strategies aiming at a just society on a local scale as well as in the context of globalisation. The function of human rights as instruments of peace and justice are closely analysed.

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.

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

without object

Other credits in programs