Module PHL2118 for 2021/2
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
PHL2118: Moral agency in social context
This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.
Module Aims
The aim of this module is to encourage and enable you to reflect critically on ways in which people’s social conditions, including students’ own social conditions, might shape and constrain their moral knowledge and agency. The module draws on materials from the social sciences, such as the history of slavery and abolition, the sociology of inequality, and connects with analytical philosophical debates on collective moral responsibility, the social conditions of knowledge and ignorance, and the nature and extent of moral duties to needy others. In essence, you will learn to think about the ways in which society impacts on our individual capacity for moral agency.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
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Module-Specific Skills | 1. address philosophically the question of whether or how far people's moral beliefs and agency are determined or constrained by their social conditions of existence; 2. Demonstrate the ability to think about moral questions in a specifically social and institutional context. |
Discipline-Specific Skills | 3. think, reason and argue analytically in social philosophy; 4. apply philosophical analysis to practical issues of historical and contemporary significance. |
Personal and Key Skills | 5. deploy philosophical analysis in the assessment of everyday personal and social practices; and 6. demonstrate the ability to reflect on taken for granted assumptions. |
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:
1. Introduction: moral agency & moral responsibility.
2. Collective responsibility?
3. The Marxian view of morality.
4. & 5. Social context and moral ignorance.
6. & 7. Social change and moral agency: the case of slavery and abolition.
8. Inequality, functional importance and incentives.
9. Personal/political agency & collective responsibility (I): Rich egalitarianism?
10. Personal/political agency & collective responsibility (II): Duties to alleviate absolute poverty?
11. Moral saintliness & the demandingness of morality.
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
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21.5 | 128.5 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
Category | Hours of study time | Description |
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Scheduled learning and teaching activities | 16.5 | Weekly 1.5 hour lectures. Lectures provide you with a broad overview of types and ways of social analysis; they cover more ground than is possible in tutorials, and are designed to establish a context in which to think about the issues discussed in tutorials. |
Scheduled learning and teaching activities | 5 | Fortnightly tutorials. A specific reading is assigned, and you are provided with a list of key issues to identify and discuss for each tutorial. Texts are carefully chosen as classic exemplars of the core course themes. |
Guided independent study | 45 | Preparation for tutorial participation including reading and planning |
Guided independent study | 83.5 | Preparation for essay, library, research etc. |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
T. Bender (ed.) (1992) The antislavery debate: capitalism and abolitionism as a problem in historical interpretation
G. Cohen (2000) If You’re an egalitarian, how come you’re so rich?
M. Moody-Adams (1997) Fieldwork in familiar places: morality, culture, and philosophy.
N. Pleasants (2008) ‘Institutional wrongdoing and moral perception’ Journal of Social Philosophy 39 (1), 96–115.
N. Pleasants ‘Moral argument is not enough: The persistence of slavery and the emergence of abolition’, Philosophical Topics, vol 38 (1), 2010, 139-60