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What makes some actions right and some actions wrong, or maybe even evil? What is the good life? And what is the good society, and how can we create it?
Ethics, social and political philosophy addresses these inescapable theoretical and practical questions we ask ourselves as individuals and societies.
Explore the fundamental choices we make as part of our common lives together and better understand questions concerning the beautiful, the right, and the good, for individuals and for groups.
While informed by empirical findings, in ethical, social and political philosophy we reflect on our deepest convictions concerning the bases of right (and wrong) actions, individual freedom and responsibility versus collective goals and action, the treatment of minority groups, theories of criminal justice, conceptions and implementations of human rights, ideals of equality and fairness, and the role of government in setting and enforcing regimes for a good and just society.
First year
PHIL104 Introduction to Ethics
Second year
PHIL200 Contemporary Moral Problems
PHIL201 Issues in Bioethics
PHIL202 Justice, Authority and Human Rights
PHIL209 Philosophy Film and the Arts
PHIL225 The Ground and Nature of Rights
Third year
PHIL320 Ethics, Justice and the Good Society
PHIL511 Philosophy and the Moral Life
PHIL623 Healthcare Ethics: Principles in Practice
PHIL624 The Philosophy of Justice and Community
PHIL625 Virtue in the Ethical Life
| Associate Professor David Kirchhoffer | Healthcare ethics |
| Associate Professor Bridget Pratt | Global health ethics, healthcare ethics, research ethics (focus on equity and social justice); environmental justice, and/or ecological justice |
| Dr Marija Kirjanenko | Bioethics |
| Dr Steve Matthews | Healthcare ethics |
| Associate Professor Xavier Symons | Healthcare ethics, philosophy of wellbeing |
| Associate Professor Bernadette Tobin | Healthcare ethics |
| Dr Alda Balthrop Lewis | Environmental ethics |
| Dr Caleb Perl | Semantics and pragmatics of moral discourse; moral error theory; moral naturalism |
| Talia Morag | Practical and theoretical reason |
| Professor Clayton Littlejohn | Practical and theoretical reason |
| Associate Professor Steve Matthews | Addiction; agency; responsibility; social self |
| Dr Caleb Perl | Consequentialism |
| Dr Stewart Braun | Virtue theory |
| Millicent Churcher | Sentimentalism in Smith and Hume |
| Adam Lovett | Social ethics and ethics of democracy |
| Dr Tyler Paytas | Plato; Stoicism; Kant; Sidgwick; Aristotle |
| Associate Professor Matt Sharpe | Philosophy as a way of life, stoic ethics, history of Western ethical philosophies |
| Dr James Dorahy | Deleuze, Rancière, philosophy of cinema |
| Dr Stewart Braun | Distributive and productive justice |
| Milicent Churcher | Philosophy of institutions, epistemic justice |
| Adam Lovett | Democratic theory |
| Dr James Dorahy | Marxism and post-Marxism |
| Talia Morag | |
| Dr Caleb Perl | Political liberalism |
| Associate Professor Andrew Poe | Democratic theory; resistance; political violence |
| Associate Professor Matt Sharpe | Camus; psychoanalytic political theory; Leo Strauss; far right/fascism/neofascism; politics of intellectuals |
| Millicent Churcher | Affect; embodiment; power; institutions; gender; sex |
| Dr Stewart Braun | Philosophy of law |
| Dr Alda Balthrop Lewis | Environmental philosophy; Thoreau and environmental ethics |
| Dr Nick Trakakis | Philosophy as literature; literature as philosophy, Dostoevsky; Kafka; poetry and philosophy |
| Professor Claude Romano | William Faulkner |
| Kishore Saval | Shakespeare; phenomenology and hermeneutics; critical theory |
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