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Course, academic year 2018/2019
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Ethics and Economics - JEM020
Title: Ethics and Economics
Czech title: Ethics and Economics
Guaranteed by: Institute of Economic Studies (23-IES)
Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
Actual: from 2016 to 2018
Semester: winter
E-Credits: 6
Examination process: winter s.:
Hours per week, examination: winter s.:2/2, Ex [HT]
Capacity: 97 / 97 (97)
Min. number of students: unlimited
4EU+: no
Virtual mobility / capacity: no
State of the course: taught
Language: English
Teaching methods: full-time
Additional information: http://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=3695
Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan
enabled for web enrollment
priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
Guarantor: doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
Teacher(s): doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
Class: Courses for incoming students
Examination dates   Schedule   Noticeboard   
Files Comments Added by
download LNWeek1EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the First Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek10EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Tenth Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek11EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Eleventh Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek12EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Twelfth Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek2EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Second Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek3EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Third Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek4EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Fourth Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek5EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Fifth Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek6EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Sixth Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek7EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Seventh Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek8EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Eighth Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
download LNWeek9EE.pdf Lecture Notes for the Ninth Week doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
Annotation -
There are no required prerequisites for this course.

This course is interdisciplinary: different concepts from moral and political philosophy, methodology, social sciences, economics and finance are used for discussing many relevant topics. Used concepts are explained in lectures, relevant topics specified in the syllabus are discussed in seminars.

This course is also part of the inter-university programme prg.ai Minor. It pools the best of AI education in Prague to provide students with a deeper and broader insight into the field of artificial intelligence.
More information is available at https://prg.ai/minor.
Last update: Cahlík Tomáš, doc. Ing., CSc. (09.11.2023)
Literature - Czech

Lecture notes for each week  are in the SIS..

Recommended readings for each week are specified in the syllabus.

 

Recommended videos:

Harvard Justice course:   justiceharvard.org

Yale open course "The Moral Foundations of Politics":   https://oyc.yale.edu/political-science/plsc-118/lecture-1

 

Last update: Cahlík Tomáš, doc. Ing., CSc. (11.06.2025)
Requirements to the exam

Grading:

  • Three online midterm tests (10 % each) and an online final test (70 %) in Moodle. You must be registered in Moodle on:

https://dl3.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=547

1st midterm test: October 31st, 2025 (the whole day)

2nd midterm test: November 28th, 2025 (the whole day)

3rd midterm test: January 2nd, 2026 (the whole day)

Final tests will be on January 8th at 2:00 p.m., on January 15th at 2:00 p.m., on January 29th at 2:00 p,m, and on February 12th at 2:00 p.m.

There are no retakes for midterm tests, you just lose the points. According to our study rules, you have two retakes for the final test.

After summarizing all points, our standard grading scale will be applied:

0-50 (F), 51-60 (E), 61-70 (D), 71-80 (C), 81-90 (B), 91-100 (A)

Last update: Cahlík Tomáš, doc. Ing., CSc. (11.06.2025)
Syllabus -
      • Week 1
        • Introduction to the course (Linking Ethics and Economics.  Institutions, Organizations and Ethics)
        • Consequentialist x Categorical Reasoning
        • Ethical Pre-Understanding of Real Situations
        • Empiricist Ethics (Empiricism. Hedonism. David Hume. Utilitarianism)
        • Moral reasoning: sound and valid arguments
        • Utility in Economic Models
        • What is Ethics? (Ethics as Practical Philosophy. Forms of Ethics)

        Required Reading:

        Max Weber: Politics as Vocation (Can be found on web) e.g. http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber-Politics-as-a-Vocation.pdf

      • Week 2

        • Philosophy - Selected Topics
        • Philosophy of Science
        • Philosophy of Social Science
        • Exercising of moral reasoning on Legality of Drugs

        Required Reading:

        John Stuart Mill - Utilitarianism (e.g. https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/mill1863.pdf )

        Optional Readings:

        http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/viceCrime/m6/nadelmann%20-%20the%20case%20for%20legalization.htm

        https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/against-the-legalization-of-drugs/

         

      • Week 3

        • Philosophy of Social Science - Continued
               Macrosocial Science and Functionalism
               Moral Questions and Social Science
        • Philosophy of Economics
        • Exercising of moral reasoning on abortion

        Required Reading:

        Milton Friedman - The Methodology of Positive Economics (e.g. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnx0c3puZ2F3b25nfGd4OjE3MDM2MDQ3OWRmZWE1NTY )

        Optional Readings:

        http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

        http://faculty.polytechnic.org/gfeldmeth/45.marquis.pdf

         

      • Week 4

        • From Personal to Social and Economic Ethics
                       Human Person in Human Relations
                       Human Relations in Institutional Intermediation
                       Social and Economic ethics
        • Comparison of methodological and theoretical bases of Neoclasical Synthesis and Postkeynesian Economics
        • Exercising of moral reasoning on migration

        Required Reading:

        Ludwig von Mises: Human Action - Introduction (Economics and Praxeology, The Epistemological Problem of a General Theory of Human Action, Economic Theory and the Practice of Human Action, Résumé) (e.g. https://cdn.mises.org/Human%20Action_3.pdf )

        Optional Readings:

        http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/living_on_a_lifeboat.pdf

        http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/magazine/the-singer-solution-to-world-poverty.html

         

      • Week 5

        • Theory of Choice
        • Immanuel Kant and Categorical Reasoning
        • Thomas Aquinas and Conscience
        • Exercising of moral reasoning on "helping to the poor"
        • Comparison of different approaches: Ethical Egoism, Social Contract approach, Utilitarianism and Christian approach

        Required Reading:

        Friedrich August von Hayek: Law, legislation and Liberty - Chapter 7 (General Welfare and Particular Purposes) (e.g. https://libsa.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/hayek-law-legislation-and-liberty.pdf )

        Optional Readings:

        https://www.jefftk.com/rachels-2013-immorality-having-children.pdf

        http://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Online/texts/425/Sen,%20PropertyHunger.pdf

         

      • Week 6

        • Four Levels for Judgement of Rules
        • Iterative Relation between Individual Rules and Social Norms
        • Psyche – Psychological and Philosophical Insight
        • Social Stability - Giving Reasons to Ethical Norms
        • Are there some universal human rights?
        • Exercising of moral reasoning on the ethics of war and peace

        Required Reading:

        CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conducts (just 2 pages) (please find on https://www.cfainstitute.org/pages/index.aspx  under EthicsAndStandards)

        Optional Readings:

        http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil100/14.%20The%20Ethics%20of%20War%20and%20Peace.pdf

        https://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1428085978JohnRawls.pdf

         

      • Week 7

        • Constitutional Economics I
          • Origin
          • Constitutional Contract
          • The Contractarian Birth of State
          • Postconstitutional Contract
          • Public Goods and Common Resources
        • Selfrealization and Freedom I
        • Exercising of financial analysts ethics: Ethics Codes, CFA Ethics Code, CFA Standards of Professional Conduct
           

        Required Reading:

        Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) (e.g. https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blog.nus.edu.sg/dist/c/1868/files/2012/12/Kant-Groundwork-ng0pby.pdf )

      • Week 8

        • Constitutional Economics II
          • Status Quo
          • Contractual Changes in the Status Quo
          • Dual Capacity of State
          • Order as Public Goods
          • Order as Public Capital Goods
          • Are we not governed too much?
          • What can we do with that?
        • Redistributive Role of the State
        • Selfrealization and Freedom II
          • Guilt and Shame
        • Exercising of moral reasoning on terrorism and torture

        Required Reading:

        Karl Raimund Popper: The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1 - Chapter 1 (Historicism and the Myth of Destiny) and Chapter 9 (Estheticism, Radicalism and Utopianism) (e.g. on https://epdf.pub/the-open-society-and-its-enemies-the-spell-of-platoa93dec0c92690f48572982c5940e421739524.html (download as Full Text)

        Optional Readings:

        http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2002/11/27/0000184966

        http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub

         

      • Week 9:

        • Virtue
        • Fairness, Labour Market and Inflation
          • Mainstream Approach
          • Postkeynesian Approach
            • Labour Demand
            • Labour Supply
            • Competing Claims Model of Inflation
        • Exercising of moral reasoning on animals and environmentalist ethics

        Required Reading:

        Aristotle: The Politics - Book 1 (e.g. http://files.libertyfund.org/files/819/0033-02_Bk_SM.pdf )

      • Week 10

        • Justice
        • Happiness
        • Sense
        • Selected Economic Topics  with Stressed Ethical Dimension" (System of Natioonal Accounts and Distribution of GDP,Measuring Income, Job and Wealth Distribution, Economics of Happiness, New Institutional Economics and Trust, Economics and Family, Economics and Gender)
        • Exercising of moral reasoning on family, marriage and household

        Required Reading:

        • Alisdair MacIntyre: After Virtue (e.g. https://epistemh.pbworks.com/f/4.+Macintyre.pdf ), Chapter 14: "The Nature of the Virtues"

          Optional Readings:

          https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5933&context=lalrev

          https://newrepublic.com/article/103297/for-better-or-worse-gay-straight-marriage

           

        • Week 11

          • Democracy

          Required Reading:

          Hannah Arendt: Philosophy and Politics (https://zetesisproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/arendt-phi-and-politics.pdf)

        • Week 12

          • Miscellaneous
            • Marxist Ethics
            • Psyche once more
              • Psychoanalysis
              • Etology and Konrad Lorenz
            • Nietsche and his hammer
            • Material value ethics
            • Existentionalist Ethics
            • Ethics of discours
          • Exercising of moral reasoning on ICT development

          Required Reading:

          Bertrand Russel: The Elements of Ethics (1910) (http://fair-use.org/bertrand-russell/the-elements-of-ethics)

Last update: Cahlík Tomáš, doc. Ing., CSc. (14.11.2020)
 
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