Migdalia Arcila-Valenzuela

This course is an introductory exploration of the main ethical issues that arise both in connection to our personal relationships and to our broader socio-political contemporary contexts. Some of the questions we explore in this course are: is impartiality compatible with love? Does emotional attachment negatively interfere with personal autonomy? Do we hold moral obligations towards the dead? How is patriarchy intertwined with colonialism in the imposition of moral obligations to racialized women? what are the personal and social conditions that posibilitate moral repair?

Medical ethics is the study of the moral questions that arise within the healthcare domain and the principles that should govern the practice of medicine. This course is an exploration of some of those questions and principles to understand not only the ethical complexities of the doctor-patient relationship but also how this relationship is immersed in social-political structures. This is why we will address questions about individual autonomy that arise when considering issues such as informed consent, conscientious objection, abortion, and euthanasia. However, we will address these questions by looking at how socio-economic factors and racial and gender prejudices affect the terms of the discussion.

This course is an introductory exploration of key questions in contemporary social and political debates surrounding the issues of social injustice, oppression, and liberation.  Some of the questions we explore in this course are: how does colonialism shape the relationship among states in the modern world? what are the individual and social consequences of extremely unfair distribution of resources? How to understand the interaction between structural forces and individual preferences in the perpetuation of oppressive systems? Why is “identity politics” a polarizing discourse?

Although there is not a fixed definition of what constitutes Latin American philosophy, this field is marked by the particularities of the colonial history of the continent and the subsequent and continued struggles for political independence. We will address questions such as: how should Latin American philosophy be defined, if at all? What are the philosophical debates sparked by the encounter of indigenous communities, black Africans, and colonizers? What are the key concepts that drove Simon Bolivar’s independentist campaigns of the nineteenth century? How has the intersection of race, class, and gender shaped the central questions of feminist and queer philosophy in Latin America? How has the experience of the Latin American diaspora pushed forward questions about migration ethics and justice?