Essay (45%), second assignment (45%) and tutorial work (10%).

Enrolment in the MA(PAE) or with the permission of the coordinator.

6,000 word essay (80%) and class presentation (20%).

Enrolment in the MA(PAE) or with the permission of the coordinator.

This subject will focus on providing a comprehensive understanding of current key debates within bioethics including: the normative effects of medical technology, in relation to reproductive options and decision making, genetic testing, genetic engineering,  cloning, and human enhancement; embryo experimentation and stem cell research; the duties of health care professionals; and emerging topics in bioethics such as ethical issues associated with global public health, infectious disease, and the bioterrorist threat. The subject also aims to develop student understanding of some of the deeper philosophical issues implicated in these debates regarding, for example quality of life; justice; the nature of personhood, health, disease, life and death; issues of moral agency and responsibility,including distinctions between what we intend and foresee or our actions and omissions; and the different approaches to such issues provided by our normative ethical theories, most notably, Consequentialism, Kantianism, and Virtue ethics.

When successfully completed, students will have developed a good theoretical understanding both of central and current issues in bioethics and of some key philosophical issues of importance to applied ethics more generally.

6,000 word essay (80%) and class presentation (20%).

In societies like ours, many things are commodified: grain, wool, and certain kinds of information are obvious examples.  But commodification may also impinge on the individual: consider here the division of labour, and many aspects of the employment relationship.  There are other more problematic cases – consider the commodification of sex, that blood typically cannot be sold but can be given away to strangers; that (live) kidneys can typically be given to friends and relatives but not to strangers – and that there is a lively debate about the pros and cons of the sale of kidneys.  Further, while people can’t sell their corpses, there is a profitable market in donated (and un-donated) corpses and parts of corpses.  In this course, a range of such issues will be examined and philosophical issues raised by them, explored.

Completion of 48 units towards a degree program.

13 weeks with 2 seminar-style lectures, plus 1 tutorial per week (tutorials begin in second week)

This course looks at questions of equity and justice in a challenging and interdisciplinary way. Its aim is to ask how can we achieve equity and justice in a variety of contexts - from the body to the environment. And to see how questions of equity and justice intersect with nationality, citizenship, identity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, faith and belief. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the course, many of the seminars will be conducted by some of the university’s best teachers, research staff and Emeriti from a variety of disciplines in the arts and the sciences. In the process of the above inquiry the course will traverse current issues facing us locally and globally.

Seminar participation (10%), oral presentation (30%) and research essay (60%)

Two first-year courses in Political Science, or History, or Sociology, or with the permission of the lecturer.

Two lectures and one tutorial a week.

This course will examine the changing role of social movements in bringing about change in a globalising world. From the 1960s so-called 'new social movements', including women's, lesbian and gay and environmental movements, transformed the social and political landscape of western societies. These movements promoted new forms of organisation, tactics and ideas such as the politics of oppression, identity and culture, empowerment and post-materialism. More recently, an increasingly global civil society has emerged with a variety of indigenous, third-world, anti-corporate globalisation, international trade union and social justice movements. The course will examine these developments in the light of current research and analysis.

Essay (45%), second assignment (45%) and tutorial work (10%).

Burgmann, V., Power, Profit and Protest: Australian social movements and globalisation (Allen & Unwin, 2003).

Enrolment in the MA(PAE) or with the permission of the coordinator.

6,000 word essay(80%) and class presentation (20%).

Enrolment in the MA(PAE) or with the permission of the coordinator.

6,000 word essay (80%) and class presentation (20%).

Roger Homan, The Ethics of Social Research; Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Human Cloning, August 2001; National Statement on Ethical Conduct In Research Involving Humans, NHMRC http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/publications/pdf/e35.pdf

Completion of:
(a) two courses of Philosophy; or
(b) two courses in Political Science, Anthropology, Sociology or Gender, Sexuality and Culture; or
(c) with permission of the Coordinator.

20 hours of lectures and 12 hours of tutorials.

What is the relation between democracy as a political ideal and our capacity as a society to respect and foster plurality? If democracy is a form of mass rule then how can it honour and do justice to cultural and individual differences? If, on the other hand, democracy is based upon the principle of the rule of law, then does this by itself guarantee that a genuinely democratic society will be so organised as to foster plurality? These are problems at the heart of much discussion of multiculturalism, racism, sexism and homophobia.

1,000 word article review (25%), 2,500 word essay (55%), tutorial presentation (10%) and tutorial participation (10%).

20 hours of lectures and 12 hours of tutorials.

20 hours of lectures and 12 hours of tutorials.

This course will be concerned with a range of philosophical issues relating to rights. It will include: (a) discussion in the history of philosophy about the origins and early character of ideas concerning rights, including ideas about rights and their relation to natural law; (b) discussion of a range of arguments about the existence and status of rights, including attempts to 'justify' them; (c) discussion about what the character of rights and correlative obligations should be, and who should be the bearers of these obligations; (d) discussion of current controversies about rights - such as aboriginal land rights, or rights and 'Asian values'. Our prime concern will be with philosophical consideration of normative issues - i.e. about what rights should be - and issues about rights and customary or positive law (national or international) will be discussed in that context.

Short exercise (10%), 2 x 1,500 word essays (80%) and tutorial performance (10%).

Cranston, M, What are the Human Rights?, Bodley Head, 1973

Haakonssen, Knud and Lacey, Michael, A Culture of Rights, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Two first-year courses in Political Science, or Sociology, or Philosophy or with the permission of the lecturer.

Two lectures and one tutorial a week.

This course will examine the social and political thought of the Frankfurt School and Habermas. After a brief look at the formation and history of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, the first part of the course will examine some of the major themes of the Frankfurt School's brand of 'critical theory'. Themes will include: Marxism; Weber and the philosophy of history; Freudian psychoanalysis; aesthetics, art and the culture industry; and the notion of a critical theory of society. The work of theorists such as Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse will be discussed. The second part of the course will look in more detail at the work of Jürgen Habermas, the latest and most systematic of the thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School. We shall consider Habermas's reformulation of critical theory, his account of knowledge and human interests and his theory of communication.

Essay (45%), second assignment (45%) and tutorial work (10%).

West, D. An Introduction to Continential Philosophy, 1996.

Held, D. Introduction to Critical Theory, 1980.