Public Philosophy

The course of Public Philosophy aims to explore political problems from both classical and contemporary perspectives. Its primary objective is to foster the development of evaluative language skills for interpreting political events, which are also to be normatively assessed and not only described. Thus, the fundamental question becomes: what criteria should be deemed desirable for political judgment and action? By learning to compare various normative perspectives students develop their own argumentative abilities.

At the end of the course, students will be able to:
1. Explain the problem of the relation between ethics and politics.
2. Describe and explain the differences among the major normative approaches for evaluating political actions and actors (consequentialism and deontological ethics).
3. Explain what it means to judge politically and how it differs from both describing and prescribing.
4. Critically evaluate and construct normative arguments, namely offer justifications in favour of certain normative positions, with respect to political action and facts.
5. Investigate particular political issues by debating contrasting and opposite theses on the bases of academic articles or with respect to specific cases.