Catastrophe Ethics: How to Respond to Public Health Disasters

2 Credits.

Explores the ethics of responding to large, structural, public health disasters, or ‘catastrophe ethics’. Investigates catastrophes with the following property: they are so large that no individual action or person can solve them; rather, they require coordination of large collectives. Focuses on climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic, and structural racism over the course of the week, asking two, overarching questions about each: what are we obligated to do in the face of such crises; and regardless of what we as a society do, what are we obligated to do in our private lives? Investigates the relationship between the structural and the individual answers.