Duração: 5 sessões, 1h15, 45 minutos de palestra + 30 minutos de discussão
Datas: June 2026 | Mondays 1st, 8, 15, 22, 29, at 7pm.
Inscrições abertas a partir de 1 fev
(Tradução em PT/ EN/ FR/ ES)

The aim of this course is to enable you to approach the question of how we should decide what is best to do and how it is best to lead our lives. If our value judgments are not merely subjective preferences and viewpoints, what are the best criteria for our moral decisions? In considering these issues you will examine a variety of ethical concepts, such as those of utility, duty, virtue, and goodness, which are widely used in moral and political arguments. I will introduce you to some major thinkers, such as Aristotle, Kant, and Mill.

1. The Puzzling Nature of Moral Problems
In this first session we explore the peculiar and idiosyncratic logic of moral problems.

2. The Rightness of Action is Determined by the Value of its Consequences.
In the second session we explore the utilitarianist view on ethics. Popular today with trends like veganism and theories like Effective Altruism, we look at the grounds and shortcomings of the view that to know if an action is good we should look at its consequences.

3. To Do What is Right is to Act from Duty: The Need for Universality
In the third session we explore Immanuel Kant’s fierce criticism of consequentialism and the idea that the moral choice must be universalizable, worked out through reason, and independent from consequences –good or bad.

4. To Act Well is to Be Virtuous: Why Motivation Matters
In the fourth session we examine the Aristotelian perspective on Ethics. Switching our focus from the action to the individual we explore how acting virtuously results from being virtuous, and how virtue is defined in Aristotle’s work.

5. Beyond Ethical Theories
In the final session we reflect on real life examples of moral problems, the applicability of the main ethical theories, and cases that challenge ethical theories as such.