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Lehrende: Dr. Costanza Porro
Veranstaltungsart:
Hauptseminar
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
Semesterwochenstunden:
2
Credits:
4,0
Unterrichtssprache:
Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl:
1 | 25
Kontingentschema: Phil_Standard_WS1415
Weitere Informationen:
Für den erfolgreichen Besuch dieser Veranstaltung im Rahmen des Fachspezifischen Wahbereichs werden 4 LP angerechnet.
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Kommentare/ Inhalte:
Course topic:
The assumption that humans are moral equals and should be treated as such informs much contemporary theorising in moral and political philosophy. From Utilitarians to Deontologists and from Rawls to Nozick, this idea lays at the very foundation of many different, and often conflicting, moral and political theories. The large-scale agreement on this idea in this tradition is one of the causes of the relative lack of philosophical inquiry on its nature and foundation, which have become an object of systematic scrutiny only in recent years. However, providing a compelling justification of equality is of primary importance, as it is needed to firmly ground some of our most important moral and political principles. Moreover, the way in which we justify equality will have profound implications for our moral and political theorising.
The aim of this seminar is to reflect on the idea of moral equality and its basis, exploring the different approaches to this problem mainly, but not exclusively, in the analytic literature of the last decades. The most influential approach in contemporary literature, famously defended by John Rawls, is that which identifies a property that all (or the vast majority) of humans, and only humans, possess in certain cognitive capacities that allow them to be autonomous agents. According to this view, it is in virtue of the possession of this property that human beings are equals and, therefore, they should be treated as such.
This approach has been criticised in various ways. The following questions are at the core of this debate and will be explored during this course: do we have to assume that human beings are equal in some significant respect at the descriptive level to derive the normative conclusion that they should be treated as equals? Are there alternative strategies to ground our commitment to moral equality? Should we argue that human beings have a higher moral status than other beings, and if so, on what grounds? Isn’t the fact that certain human beings, e.g. those with severe cognitive disabilities and young children, do not possess sophisticated cognitive capacities present a problem for this account? And the fact that these capacities are not possessed equally by all? Is this a faithful characterisation of what makes us human and equals or should we focus on capacities other than those which refers to our autonomy and independence, such as those which emphasise the domain of relationships and our vulnerability?
In light of these critiques, we will look at other accounts of moral equality which focus on features other than the capacity of being autonomous or abandon the search for a feature and the claim that human beings have higher moral status and pursue alternative strategies to ground moral equality.
In exploring these issues, we will explore the relationship between the idea of moral equality and the neighbouring concepts of dignity, respect and moral status. Moreover, we will explore the implications of the theorising on moral equality and dignity on the understanding of human rights and their foundations.
Course structure:
The course will be taught with a combination of zoom live meetings, video lectures and forum discussions.
Literatur:
Arneson, Richard. ‘What, If Anything, Renders All Humans Morally Equal?’. In Singer and His Critics, edited by D. Jamieson, 103–28. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
Benhabib, Seyla. Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Bird, Colin. ‘Dignity as a Moral Concept’. Social Philosophy and Policy 30, no. 1–2 (January 2013): 150–76.
Darwall, Stephen L.‘Two Kinds of Respect’. Ethics 88, no. 1 (October 1977): 36–49. https://doi.org/10.1086/292054.
Floris, Giacomo. ‘On the Basis of Moral Equality: A Rejection of the Relation-First Approach’. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22, no. 1 (February 2019): 237–50.
Honneth, Axel. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996.
Husi, Stan. ‘Why We (Almost Certainly) Are Not Moral Equals’. The Journal of Ethics 21, no. 4 (December 2017): 375–401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-017-9250-4.
Kagan, Shelly. ‘What’s Wrong with Speciesism’. Journal of Applied Philosophy 33, no. 1 (February 2016): 1–21.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals.
Kittay, Eva Feder. ‘At the Margins of Moral Personhood’. Ethics 116, no. 1 (October 2005): 100–131.
Korsgaard, Christine M. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge; New York,: Cambridge University Press, 1996. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139174503.
McMahan, Jeff. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. Oxford Ethics Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Nussbaum, Martha. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. rev.ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Rosen, Michael. Dignity: Its History and Meaning. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Sangiovanni, Andrea. Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. 3rd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Steinhoff, Uwe, ed. Do All Persons Have Equal Moral Worth? On ‘basic Equality’ and Equal Respect and Concern. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Tasioulas, John. ‘Human Dignity and the Foundations of Human Rights’. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013, 01–22. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2557649.
Tom Parr, and Adam Slavny. ‘Rescuing Basic Equality’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100, no. 3 (September 2019): 837–57.
Valentini, Laura. ‘Dignity and Human Rights: A Reconceptualisation’. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 37, no. 4 (1 December 2017): 862–85. https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqx011.
Waldron, Jeremy. One Another’s Equals: The Basis of Human Equality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017.
Waldron, Jeremy, and Meir Dan-Cohen. Dignity, Rank, and Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Warren, Mary Anne. Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Williams, Bernard. Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Zusätzliche Hinweise zu Prüfungen:
Studienleistung
Careful preparation and active participation during the seminar
Other assignments, such as student presentation and reports, might be announced at the start of the course
Prüfungsleistung
Term paper of 7500 words
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