Enheden koordinerer projekter om emner inden for etik, retsfilosofi og politisk filosofi. Aktuelle forskningsspørgsmål angår krigens etik, bioetik, moralpsykologi, roboetik, politisk retfærdighed, det offentlige rum, hverdagspolitik, social filosofi, ulighed, politisk offentlighed, velfærdsstaten, etisk naturalisme, normativitet, straf, rettigheder, medieetik, forskningsetik, moralfilosofiens historie, Løgstrup som moralfilosof.

Enheden har en international profil, med solide forbindelser til flere af verdens mest prominente forskningscentre inden for feltet. Enhedens forskning publiceres i højt rangerede tidsskrifter og enhedens medlemmer søger aktivt europæiske og danske forskningsmidler.

Enheden arrangerer et løbende forskningsseminar med deltagere fra hele universitetet, arrangerer ofte workshops og konferencer.

Mandag d. 16.9, kl. 13:15-15:00, Bygn. 1465-616.

Kenneth Richman  (Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences) Autism and Consent for Research: Defending a Kantian Approach.

Mandag den 28.10. Byg 1465, Lokale 616, kl 16-18:

Dr Johannes Lenhard, Max Cam Centre, University of Cambridge: 

Better lives on the street – homeless people in Paris between long-term home-making and short-term survival

Abstract: Most of my rough-sleeping informants in Paris had hopes for leaving the street behind, hopes for a better life in the future. These hopes were on the one hand translated into small steps towards the fulfilment of the respective goals – what I call daily home-making practices: getting an address, registering with the administration – but on the other hand, they regularly clashed with short-term desires, often connected to alcohol and drugs. Navigating these conflicts was part of the daily survivals of the rough sleeping people I worked with in the French capital. I will build on the detailed readings of two of my informants’ trajectories – Pascal from Germany, Barut from Bulgaria – theorising how their struggles are part of making a better life first on and eventually (hopefully) off the street.

Mandag d. 11.11, Bygn 1465, Lokale 616, kl. 13:15 - 15:00.

Dr. Jameson Garland, Department of Law, University of Uppsala, Sweden

Care for Children Born with Variations of Sex Characteristics - The Limits of Medicine, Ethics & Law?

Abstract: Nonconsensual gender-conforming interventions on children born with variations of sex characteristics have recently come under sharp criticism from human rights authorities within the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the European Union. These authorities have identified the medical interventions in question as violating children’s rights to bodily integrity, privacy, and protection from violence, torture, and degrading treatment and have called on nations to reform their legal frameworks to protect these children. Few nations have taken such actions.

Medical experts who perform these procedures concede that the interventions are not substantiated as necessary, safe or effective for each affected child, but they have also not supported calls for regulation or abandonment of these practices, even though several national medical ethics commissions have urged them to do so.What do these outcomes tell us about the limits of law, medicine, and ethics to protect children from socially-driven medically harmful procedures?

Mandag d. 25.11, Bygn 1465, Lokale 616, kl. 13:15 - 15:00.

Dr. Nora Hämäläinen, Senior Researcher, Center for Ethics, University of Pardubice, Czech Republic

Metaphors of Change - How to talk about moral change?

Abstract: Moral beliefs, customs, norms and virtues are historcially specific and contextually anchored. Thus they undergo change. Social scientists adressing such beliefs and customs tend to take this mutability at face value: morality is indeed this changing and culturally varying thing. Most contemporary moral theorists however find this perspective deeply unsatisfactory and premised on a conceptual confusion: prudential norms and mores surely change, but morality is always the same, universal by definition. In this talk I argue that this philosophical universalism leads philosophers to miss out on important aspects of lived moral life which would be necessary for an adequate philosophical account, even if one believs in a universal morality. The challenge is to find ways to talk about moral change and contextuality in ways which avoid the dichotomy between universalism and relativism. To do this we need to rethink the metaphors that shape our thinking about morality.