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This course explores the ethical challenges of climate change from historical, social, economic, political, cultural and scientific perspectives. These include the discovery of global warming over two centuries, the rise of secular and religious denialism and skepticism toward the scientific consensus on it, the dispute between developed and developing countries over how to forge a binding global agreement to mitigate it, and the "role morality" of various actors (scientists, politicians, fossil fuel companies, the media and ordinary individuals) in the US in assessing ethical responsibility for the problem and its solutions.

Ideas have circulated globally for millennia but relatively recently have thinkers begun to conceptualize the global. Like "humanity" and "universalism," or what Marx called "international," the "global" too has complex genealogies. It is associated, often simultaneously, with empire and freedom, war and equality, commitment and treason, piracy and justice, homelessness and cosmopolitanism. Working with key 20th century texts from Italy, Britain, India, Israel, Palestine, Germany, France, and Algeria, course explores how thinking "globally" impacts the very foundations of modern political thought.

Ethical questions pervade a human life from before a person is conceived until after she dies, and at every point in between. This course raises a series of ethical questions, following along the path of a person¿s life ¿ questions that arise before, during, and after she lives it. We will explore distinctive questions that a life presents at each of several familiar stages: prior to birth, childhood, adulthood, death, and even beyond. We will consider how some philosophers have tried to answer these questions, and we will think about how answering them might help us form a better understanding of the ethical shape of a human life as a whole. Seminar for Juniors and Seniors in Philosophy or Humbio - others by permission.

Classic articles, legal cases, and foundational concepts. Theoretical approaches derived from philosophy. The ethics of medicine and research on human subjects, assisted reproductive technologies, genetics, cloning, and stem cell research. Ethical issues at the end of life. Prerequisite: Human Biology core or equivalent, or consent of instructor.

This course introduces students to the ways literature has been used to think through the ethics of human subjects research and experimental medicine. We will focus primarily on readings that imaginatively revisit experiments conducted on vulnerable populations: namely groups placed at risk by their classification according to perceived human and cultural differences. We will begin with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), and continue our study via later works of fiction, drama and literary journalism, including Toni Morrison's Beloved, David Feldshuh's Miss Evers Boys, Hannah Arendt's Eichmann and Vivien Spitz's Doctors from Hell, Rebecca Skloot's Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Each literary reading will be paired with medical, philosophical and policy writings of the period; and our ultimate goal will be to understand modes of ethics deliberation that are possible via creative uses of the imagination, and literature's place in a history of ethical thinking about humane research and care.

This course examines the ways writers in literature and medicine have used the narrative form to explore the ethics of care in what has been called the developing world. We will begin with an introduction to global health ethics as a field rooted in philosophy and policy that address questions raised by practice in resource-constrained communities abroad. We will then spend the quarter understanding the way literature may deepen and even alter those questions. For instance: how have writers used scenes of practice in Africa, the Caribbean or South Asia to think through ideas of mercy, charity, beneficence and justice? How differently do they imagine such scenes when examining issues of autonomy, paternalism and language? To what extent, then, do novels and memoirs serve as sites of ethical inquiry? And how has literary study revealed the complexities of narrating care for underserved communities, and therefore presented close reading as a mode of ethics for global health? Readings will include prose fiction by Albert Camus, Joseph Conrad, Amitav Ghosh and Susan Sontag as well as physician memoirs featuring Frantz Fanon, Albert Schweitzer, Abraham Verghese and Paul Farmer.

Ethical and political questions in public service work, including volunteering, service learning, humanitarian assistance, and public service professions such as medicine and teaching. Motives and outcomes in service work. Connections between service work and justice. Is mandatory service an oxymoron? History of public service in the U.S. Issues in crosscultural service work. Integration with the Haas Center for Public Service to connect service activities and public service aspirations with academic experiences at Stanford. [This class is capped but there are some spaces available with permission of instructor. If the class is full and you would like to be considered for these extra spaces, please email sburbank@stanford.edu with your name, grade level, and a paragraph explaining why you want to take the class.]

Recent work in political theory on global justice. Topics include global poverty, human rights, fair trade, immigration, climate change. Do developed countries have a duty to aid developing countries? Do rich countries have the right to close their borders to economic immigrants? When is humanitarian intervention justified? Readings include Charles Beitz, Thomas Pogge, John Rawls.

The major topic will be the indeterminacy regarding the survival of humankind. With the advent of the atomic bomb humankind became potentially the maker of its own demise. Will combine a number of significant case studies (environmental disasters, industrial catastrophes, threat of nuclear devastation, technological risks) with the lessons drawn from a form of literature that is at the intersection of STS and the Humanities, in particular the early warnings made by such thinkers as Ivan Illich, Martin Heidegger, Hans Jonas, Günther Anders, and Hannah Arendt.