Category: Teaching Philosophy

I have an article appearing in a volume coming out this month from Bloomsbury, New Perspectives on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Overall a good choice for upper division & graduate seminar reading.

“Incompatabilism: Contemporary perspectives on Hegel in political economy”

Abstract: This paper takes up two recent engagements with Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (PR) on the wisdom it holds for the contemporary problems of social inequality and democratic freedom. In his In the Long Run We’re All Dead, geographer Geoff Mann presents an extended analysis of a Keynesian form of managed capitalism. In doing so, Mann argues that Hegel is a Keynesian. There are striking similarities between the two thinkers, but I also show that this declaration of identity is ultimately an exaggeration that comes at the expense of Hegel’s commitment to the political integration of individual and social interests with that of the social whole in the life of the political state.

Bruce Gilbert, in his Vitality of Contradiction, argues that Hegel’s conception of right demands a different set of social institutions than what contemporary capitalism has to offer, viz. the extension of democratic forms of rule beyond political representation and into the economy, and an end to capitalist exploitation based on private property. Gilbert constructs a Hegel-inspired political economy for contemporary capitalism, including an alternative theory of exploitation based in a recognition relationship. While Gilbert is sensitive to the question of concrete political agency and its role in cultivating the consciousness of citizenship, his solution to the challenges posed by capitalist property forms and relations side-step the essential questions involved in their historical development.

 

I am currently in search of some good resources on classroom ethics. What are your favorite articles, authors, journals or blogs on teaching philosophy and especially navigating the challenges involved in classes with diverse populations?

The Teaching Philosophy journal is a valuable resource. There may also be less visible publications I don’t know about.

Have you come across anything that you came to rely on, or helped you in unexpected ways? I would love to know about it!

This fall, I’ll be joining the part-time faculty in Loyola’s growing Computer Science Department teaching Social, Legal and Ethical issues in computing. I will join a part-time faculty (which includes Loyola Philosophy alum Matt Butcher) who all work professionally in their respective fields, while teaching in computer science — it’s an interesting feature of that department.

This course covers privacy, encryption, freedom of speech, copyrights and patents, computer crime, and computer/software reliability and safety; understanding of different philosophical perspectives; some of the basics of the US legal system; and the social, ethical and legal issues raised by new technologies, like self-driving cars and the ‘internet of things.’

I’m very interested to learn more about what concerns the students who are preparing to work on the systems that keep us connected to one another and to the information we require.

I’m also considering how to bring some of the engagement, dialogue and collaboration methods from my social and political philosophy and philosophy and persons courses to the computer science majors.

I’ve been writing quite a bit this month, and haven’t had too much time to delve into the applied ethics pedagogy literature, but I did come across an interesting recent essay (being married to a librarian has many perks!).

Daniel Hartner’s article appeared in Teaching Philosophy and it asks what the proper content is for professional ethics courses. He notes there’s an important distinction between different conceptions of ethics that may be involved in building and teaching applied ethics classes. As someone who has experience in developing course content for ethics courses, but not applied ethics courses, I hadn’t considered this before. From the abstract:

What is the proper content of a course in professional ethics, such as business ethics, engineering ethics, or medical ethics? Though courses in professional ethics have been present in colleges and universities for decades, the question remains largely unsettled, even among philosophers. This state of affairs helps to sustain and even exacerbate public misconceptions about ethics and professional ethical training in higher education. I argue that the proper content of such courses remains a potential source of confusion because the term ‘ethics’ is ambiguous between philosophical and nonphilosophical forms of normative inquiry into behavior, where the former involves broad, context-sensitive reflection on moral obligation, and the latter involves the narrower analysis and codification of behavioral norms with less sensitivity to context. Failure to distinguish between these two senses of ethics can result in conflicting conceptions of and expectations for training and courses in professional ethics. I sketch some of the specific problems generated by the ambiguity. I conclude by proposing an initial step toward a solution, one which focuses on making more explicit the distinction between courses that aim to teach professional policy and “best practices” and those that encourage genuine philosophical inquiry into morality and the good life.

Is this a distinction you account for in writing applied ethics courses —  in your introductory material, or at certain points throughout a course, or in some other way? What’s your take on it? The full essay is currently available online.