General information

• Study points: 4.00
• Language: English
• Category: Lectures
• Duration: 26.0 hours 
• Periodicity: Taught this academic year in the first semester
• POC: POC Philosophy (internationaal)

Taught by

Pattyn Bart

Aims

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Content

The common approach to theory supposes that there are only individuals, that group emotions can be seen as the sum of individual emotions, and that public opinion is nothing but the average of what individuals think. These presuppositions are deceptive. Obviously, an ethos exists by the grace of the individuals who represent that ethos, but that doesn’t alter the fact that an ethos in some way leads a life of its own. An ethos presupposes a characteristic way of interpreting. People who participate in the same ethos use a common conceptual framework. An ethos is also characterised by an emotional disposition or mood. An ethos rarely creates an atmosphere entirely without obligations. Within an ethos, there is always behaviour that is expected or there are boundaries whose transgression is considered fundamentally wrong. People conform to what is required within an understanding. After all, nobody wants to experience the humiliation of being cast out by his group. That is why several philosophers, including Locke, have pointed out that the major guideline that people follow when it comes to morality is the law of fashion.[1]
[1] John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, J.W. Yolton (ed.), New York and London, 1961, Chapter 26, § 12.

Course Material

We will read parts of: Aristotle, Aristotle 'On Rhetoric': A Theory of Civic Discourse. Kennedy, George A. (ed.). New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991; Gabriel Tarde L'opinon et la foule [1901]; Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, New York, Free Press Paperbacks, 1997; Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT press, 1991); Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence. Public Opinion: Our Social Skin, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Course activities

Students should analyze ethical arguments found in philosophical and sociological texts,  express these arguments in discussion and in a paper, draw the consequences of these arguments, write a consistent paper that compares, reformulates, criticizes and draws out the consequences of the problems discussed during the seminar.

Evaluation description

Examination type:
    oral with written preparation
    written
When?: final examination during examination period
Evaluation type:
    Closed book
    Paper

Explanation

Students will be evaluated by successful completion of the course as demonstrated through an examination and an essay.