Alderman Stacks

EGMT 1540: Who Wants to Save the World, and Why? The Ethics of Global Citizenship

Instructor: 

This class seeks to ask one simple question: why do we care about the ethical state of the world?  Once upon a time, people thought about ethics as it pertained primarily to their immediate local context; to be a “good person” meant being “good” relative to those closest to you—family, friends, and neighbors.  Now, people increasingly care about ethics globally, and assume that to be good we must be ethically thoughtful as regards a wide range of global issues.  What does it mean to be a “global citizen”? Why do we increasingly think this way?  What is good about this?  What is bad about it?  And finally, why did this whole issue arise—that is, what makes this question interesting and important to us?