Ethics Civics In A Multicultural World

AY2023/2024 Special Term

This course aims to equip students with the philosophical foundations necessary to understand theories of ethics and subsequently apply those theories to real-life scenarios and issues. It also aims to enable students to critically assess the civic institutions that structure their local and global communities. To these ends, the course will examine the nature of ethics, its understanding across different cultures, and how it is manifested in concepts, social structures, and governance institutions. Topics to be explored include human rights, democracy, freedom of speech, inequality, and sexuality. The rights and duties of citizenship shall be a unifying theme. Students will think through assumptions they hold on all of these matters. They will be provided with the tools to understand various and even contradictory perspectives on these important issues.