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Ethics and Economics

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JEM020

Sylabus

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: insight 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.fi

Anotace

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/.