Ethics for a Broken World

Imagine living in the future in a world already damaged by humankind, a world where resources are insufficient to meet everyone's basic needs and where a chaotic climate makes life precarious. Then imagine looking back into the past, back to our own time and assessing the ethics of the early twenty-first century. "Ethics for a Broken World" imagines how the future might judge us and how living in a time of global environmental degradation might utterly reshape the politics and ethics of the future. This book is presented as a series of history of philosophy lectures given in the future, studying the classic texts from a past age of affluence, our own time. The central ethical questions of our time are shown to look very different from the perspective of a ruined world. The aim of "Ethics for a Broken" World is to look at our present with the benefit of hindsight - to reimagine contemporary philosophy in an historical context - and to highlight the contingency of our own moral and political ideals.

Tim Mulgan

Introduction Part I: Rights Lecture 1: Nozick's on rights Lecture 2: Self-ownership Lecture 3: The Lockean proviso Lecture 4: Nozick in the broken world Lecture 5: Nationalism Part II: Utilitarianism Lecture 6: Act utilitarianism Lecture 7: Rule utilitarianism Lecture 8: Well-being and value Lecture 9: Mill on liberty Lecture 10: Utilitarianism and future people Lecture 11: Utilitarianism for a broken world Part III: The Social Contract Lecture 12: Hobbes and Locke Lecture 13: Rawls Lecture 14: Rawls and the future Lecture 15: Rawls in a broken world Part IV: Democracy Lecture 16: Democracy Lecture 17: Democracy and the future