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Cursus: AEMV16002
AEMV16002
Ethical Theory & Moral Practice
Cursus informatie
CursuscodeAEMV16002
Studiepunten (EC)5
Cursusdoelen
1.      To improve and deepen one’s knowledge on ethical concepts and normative theories.
2.      To offer students an opportunity to get acquainted with the field of applied ethics and the methodologies developed in this field.
3.      To reflect on the relation between applied ethics and ethical theory; what is the nature of the relation and what status and authority do practice/theory have?
4.      To improve academic writing skills.
Inhoud
Is prostitution morally permissible? What is the moral status of a fetus, and under which circumstances is abortion permissible (if any)? Do we have an ecological responsibility towards future generations and what may this entail? These are just some examples of difficult real-life questions without “easy answers”, that is, examples of moral problems.
In this course we aim to identify and understand the prominent approaches for dealing with such concrete moral problems. We will discuss how basic ethical concepts, such as morality, obligation, principle, virtue, value, rights etc. can be understood. We will consider the use of important normative ethical theories (such as consequentialism, Kantianism, rights-based ethics, and virtue ethics) and methodologies as they have been developed in applied ethics, such as mid-level principles, casuistry, mixed-judgments, and empirical ethics. We will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each of these approaches with respect to their ability to address concrete moral questions.
We will discuss how we can understand a moral judgment, what it can mean to justify a moral judgment and which role ethical theories and various ethical methodologies can play in the justification of moral judgments. We will discuss some paradigmatic cases in applied ethics to evaluate the merits and demerits of different theories and approaches and to understand the role of interdisciplinarity in applied ethics. 
 
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