Syllabus
Week 1: What is, What I/We want to be and What ought to be
Introduction to the Course
Ethical Pre-Understanding of Real Situations
What is Ethics?
Human Person in Human Relations
Human Relations in Institutional Intermediation
Social and Economic Ethics
Seminar:
Required Reading – Promotion
Moral Reasoning
Sound and Valid Arguments
Consequentialist x Categorical Reasoning
Required Reading:
Plato: The Republic. 2nd Book. (Can be found on web)
Week 2: Justice and Coordination
Where the Notion of Justice Comes from
Virtues
Coordination
Seminar:
Required Reading - Promotion
Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Legality of Drugs”
Required Reading:
Alisdair MacIntyre: After Virtue. Chapter 14: "The Nature of the Virtues"
(https://epistemh.pbworks.com/f/4.+Macintyre.pdf )
Optional Readings: http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/viceCrime/m6/nadelmann%20-%20the%20case%20for%20legalization.htm https://www.commentary.org/articles/james-wilson/against-the-legalization-of-drugs
Week 3: Utilitarianism and Justice
Empiricist Ethics
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism in Economics after the Marginalist Revolution
Seminar:
Required Reading - Promotion
Discussion of the 1st homework
Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Abortion”
Required Reading:
Jeremy Bentham: An Introduction to the Principles of Moral and Legislation. Chapters 1-4.
(https://www.econlib.org/library/Bentham/bnthPML.html)
Optional Readings: http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm http://faculty.polytechnic.org/gfeldmeth/45.marquis.pdf
Week 4: Economics as Social Science
Individuals and Social Structure
Philosophy of Economics
Seminar:
Required Reading - Promotion
Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Helping to the Poor” and “Migration”
Required Reading:
Ludwig von Mises: Human Action. Introduction and Chapter I "Acting Man"
(https://cdn.mises.org/Human%20Action_3.pdf )
Optional Readings: https://www.jefftk.com/rachels-2013-immorality-having-children.pdf http://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Online/texts/425/Sen,%20PropertyHunger.pdf http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/living_on_a_lifeboat.pdf http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/magazine/the-singer-solution-to-world-poverty.html
Week 5: Justice in Neoclassical Synthesis and Postkeynesian Economics
Neoclassical Synthesis x Postkeynesian Economics, Epistemological and Methodological Differences
Theory of Choice
Mainstream Approach
Uncertainty, Substantial and Procedural Rationality
Post Keynesian Approach
Labour Market and Justice
Mainstream Approach
Post Keynesian Approach
Inflation and Justice
Mainstream Approach
Post Keynesian Approach
Seminar:
Required Reading - Promotion
Discussion of the 2nd homework
Exercising of moral reasoning on “The Ethics of War and Peace”
Required Reading:
David Hume: The Treatise of Human Nature. Book 3 “Morals”, Part 2 “Justice and injustice”, from 1 to 6 https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/hume1740book3.pdf
Optional Readings: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil100/14.%20The%20Ethics%20of%20War%20and%20Peace.pdf https://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1428085978JohnRawls.pdf
Week 6: Psyche, Transcendentality and Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant and Transcendental Philosophy
Psyche
Sigmund Freud
Karl Gustav Jung
Immanuel Kant and Categorical (Deontological) Reasoning
Thomas Aquinas and Conscience
Seminar:
Required Reading – Promotion
Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Terrorism and Torture”
Required Reading:
Immanuel Kant: Toward Perpetual Peace. Introcduction, Section 1, Section 2. https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/kant1795_1.pdf
Optional Readings: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2002/11/27/0000184966 http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub
Week 7: Happiness, Selfrealization and Freedom
Happiness
Easterline Paradox
Sense of Life
Selfrealization and Freedom
Guilt and Shame
Seminar:
Required Reading - Promotion
Discussion of the 3rd homework
Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Family, Marriage and Household “
Required Reading:
Friedrich August von Hayek: Law, Legislation and Liberty - Volume 1, Chapter 4 "The Changing Concept of Law"
(https://libsa.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/hayek-law-legislation-and-liberty.pdf )
Optional Readings: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5933&context=lalrev https://newrepublic.com/article/103297/for-better-or-worse-gay-straight-marriage
Week 8: Social Stability, Order and Liberty
Four Levels of Assessing Behaviour
Iterative Relation between Personal Rules and Social Norms
Social Stability - Giving Reasons to Ethical Norms
Order x Liberty
Seminar:
Required Reading - Promotion
Language, Freedom of Speech, Censorship, Hate Speech and Violence
Required Reading:
John Stuart Mill: On Liberty. Chapters 1 and 2. (https://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty.html)
Optional Readings: https://bigthink.com/thinking/is-speech-violence/
Week 9: Constitutional Economics
Constitutional Economics
Origin
Constitutional Contract
The Contractarian Birth of State
Post constitutional Contract
Public Goods and Common Resources
Status Quo
Contractual Changes in Status Quo
Roles of the State
Seminar:
Required Reading - Promotion
Discussion of the 4th homework
Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Animals”
Ethology and Konrad Lorenz
Required Reading:
This time, it is about listening to James Buchanan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=178aognlYHA
Optional Readings: https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/singer.pdf https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/cohen.pdf
Week 10: Justice and Democracy
Justice as Fairness
Libertarianism
Democracy: development of the idea
Majority Voting
Democracy: insigt of economists
Seminar:
Required Reading – Promotion
Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Environment”
Required Reading:
Jurgen Habermas: Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy: Chapter 3.2 "Moral Norms and Legal Norms: On the Complementary Relation between Natural Law and Positive Law" https://teddykw2.fil
Annotation
There are no required prerequisites for this course.
This course is interdisciplinary: different concepts from moral and political philosophy, methodology, social sciences, economics and finance are used for discussing many relevant topics. Used concepts are explained in lectures, relevant topics specified in the syllabus are discussed in seminars.
This course is also part of the inter-university programme prg.ai Minor. It pools the best of AI education in Prague to provide students with a deeper and broader insight into the field of artificial intelligence.
More information is available at https://prg.ai/minor.