Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Ethics and Economics

Class at Faculty of Social Sciences |
JPB338

Syllabus

Week 1  

Introduction to the course (Linking Ethics and Economics.  Institutions, Organizations and Ethics)

What is the Right Thing to Do? - Episode 1-1 (Consequentialist x Categorical Reasoning)

Ethical Pre-Understanding of Real Situations

Empiricist Ethics (Empiricism. Hedonism. David Hume. Utilitarianism)

Moral reasoning

What is the Right Thing to Do? - Episode 1-2 (Utilitarianism)

Utility in Economic Models

What is Ethics? (Ethics as Practical Philosophy. Forms of Ethics)

Week 2

Philosophy - Selected Topics

Philosophy of Science

Philosophy of Social Science

Exercising of moral reasoning on Legality of Drugs

Week 3

Philosophy of Social Science - Continued

Macrosocial Science and Functionalism

Moral Questions and Social Science

Philosophy of Economics

Exercising of moral reasoning on abortion

Week 4

From Personal to Social and Economic Ethics

Human Person in Human Relations

Human Relations in Institutional Intermediation

Social and Economic Ethics

Week 5

Theory of Choice

Immanuel Kant and Categorical Reasoning

Thomas Aquinas and Conscience

Exercising of moral reasoning on "helping to the poor"

Comparison of different approaches: Ethical Egoism, Social Contract approach, Utilitarianism and Christian approach

Week 6

Four Levels for Judgement of Rules

Iterative Relation between Individual Rules and Social Norms

Psyche – Psychological and Philosophical Insight

Social Stability - Giving Reasons to Ethical Norms

Are there some universal human rights?

Exercising of moral reasoning on the ethics of war and peace

Week 7

Constitutional Economics I

Origin

Constitutional Contract

The Contractarian Birth of State

Postconstitutional Contract

Public Goods and Common Resources

Selfrealization and Freedom I

Exercising of financial analysts ethics

Ethics Codes

CFA Ethics Code

CFA Standards of Professional Conduct

Week 8

Constitutional Economics II

Status Quo

Contractual Changes in the Status Quo

Dual Capacity of State

Order as Public Goods

Order as Public Capital Goods

Are we not governed too much?

What can we do with that?

Redistributive Role of the State

Selfrealization and Freedom II

Guilt and Shame

Exercising of moral reasoning on terrorism and torture

Week 9:

Virtue

Fairness, Labour Market and Inflation

Mainstream Approach

Postkeynesian Approach

Labour Demand

Labour Supply

Competing Claims Model of Inflation

Exercising of moral reasoning on animals and environmentalist ethics

Week 10

Justice

Happiness

Sense

Selected Economic Topics  with Stressed Ethical Dimension:

System of Natioonal Accounts and Distribution of GDP

Measuring Income, Job and Wealth Distribution

Economics of Happiness

New Institutional Economics and Trust

Economics and Family

Economics and Gender

Discussion of homework 3

Exercising of moral reasoning on family, marriage and household

Week 11 8:00 - 9:20: Clarifying midterm exam questions - based on  needs expressed by students

Midterm Exam

Week 12

Miscellaneous

Marxist Ethics

Psyche once more

Psychoanalysis

Etology and Konrad Lorenz

Nietsche and his hammer

Material value ethics

Existentionalist Ethics

Ethics of discours

Ex ante discussion of homework 4

Exercising of moral reasoning on ICT development

Annotation

Because of bad epidemiologic situation, we are fully online this semester, using Zoom, in the scheduled time. There are no required prerequisites for this course.

This course is interdisciplinary: many currently relevant social, political and economic topics are covered using concepts from philosophy, methodology, ethics, social sciences, economics and finance. Relevant topics are, e.g.:

Legality of drugs

Abortion

Migration

Helping to the poor

Ethics of war and peace

Ethics Codes - especially CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Ethics Code

Terrorism and torture

Animals and Ecological Ethics

Family, marriage, household

The death penalty

Euthanasia

Ethics of civil disobediance

Affirmative action and discrimination

Adoption to gay or lesbian pairs

Genetical engineering

Selling organs for transplantation

Course Learning Objective:

By the end of this course students will be able to discuss different topics with understanding of relevant concepts from philosophy, methodology, ethics, social sciences, economics and finance.