General description

Peace with justice is grounded in the construction of individual and collective moral consciousness. In this course, after reviewing core theoretical ideas about peace and conflict, we will approach the study of peace ethics from a critical point of view in the context of modern thought. Ideas about rationality, autonomy and justice, and about the anthropology of society, autonomy and conflict, have all contributed to our understanding of freedom and justice, but how is this to be translated into a contemporary vision of peace with justice? Historically, the ideas which compose our most basic social and political ethics have evolved with the dialectic between religious and rational thought, between what is revealed to reason from a transcendental source codified in religion, and the secular use of rationality expressed in social and political codes and norms. We will explore and discuss key authors in the history of philosophical modernity who have grappled with the question of rationality and ethics with reference to social, political and cultural life. We will focus in particular on the question of religious conflict in the public sphere, but we will also consider the issue of hospitality. We will thereby also gain a sense of the role of historical reflexivity in philosophical thought and practice as we critically explore the underlying conceptual dynamics of a peace ethics adapted to the complexity of contemporary life.

Learning outcomes

After taking this course, the student will

- gain an understanding of the role of religious ethics in modern social and political ethics
- be able to contextualize the evolution of ethical thought in intellectual history
- grasp the complexities of the dialectic between ethics and critical thought in modernity
- acquire a conceptual and critical vocabulary that will assist you in all your studies of peace and conflict from the point of view of philosophy, society and culture

Contents

The course will be divided into 8 sessions of 3 hours each, totaling 24 hours. Each session will begin with a lecture component, followed by seminar style sharing on the designated reading for that week, followed by group work and presentations.

Sessions 1-4: From the Enlightenment to Discourse and Communicative Ethics
Session 1: Introduction and Presentations, Basic Ethical Concepts in Peace Studies
Session 2: Modernity, the Enlightenment and the Critique of Reason
(Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals)
Session 3: Democracy, Reason, and Communicative Ethics
(Jürgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action)
Session 4: Democracy, Reason and Religion in the Public Sphere
(Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, and Jürgen Habermas, Judith Butler, and Charles Taylor, The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere)

Sessions 5-8: Philosophical Anthropology, Critique and Ethics
Session 5: Violence and Religion
(René Girard, Violence and the Sacred)
Session 6: Secular ethics between Theology and Philosophy
(Paul Ricoeur, Reflections on the Just)
Session 7: Religious ethics and Responsibility
(Emmanuel Lévinas, Otherwise than Being)
Session 8: Alterity and Secular Ethics
(Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality)

Evaluation and evaluation criteria

Numeric 1-5.
1) Class Attendance and Participation, Group or Pair Work & Presentation = Total: 40%. Note: This part of the course is demanding and requires a willingness and a sense of personal research initiative to engage with philosophical writing/methodology and participate actively in class. Students will identify, analyse and synthesize the philosophical writings which will be presented and analysed during each seminar. This section of the assessment will thus require the following activities: a) students must choose and prepare their readings each week from the theme presented in view of group discussion b) one formal group presentation will be graded for each student, in addition to that student’s weekly participation in the informal group/pair presentations. Each student will be required to prepare an outline for their formal presentation (each student will be graded separately). 2) Research Essay: 60% (required length: 3500-4000 words). This will consist in answering a set question. Scholarly sources used in the course and located in the library must be referenced. Students are also required to observe class ethics in order to facilitate the best learning environment possible and foster a congenial learning atmosphere for the whole group.

Study materials

Initial References:

Derrida, Jacques, and Dufourmantelle, Anne 2000. Of Hospitality. Stanford University Press.
Girard, René 1979. Violence and the Sacred. John Hopkins University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen 2002. On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action. MIT Press.
Habermas, Jürgen and Joseph Ratzinger 2007. Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion. Ignatius Press.
Habermas, Jürgen, Butler, Judith, and Charles Taylor 2011. The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. Columbia University Press.
Kant, Immanuel 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. London: Hackett.
Lévinas, Emmanuel 1999. Otherwise than Being. Duquesne University Press.
Ricoeur, Paul 2007. Reflections on the Just, trans. Pellauer, D. University of Chicago Press.

Further information

The course is available for UTA degree students from other Master's degree programmes.

Belongs to following study modules