Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Synopsis Many people claim that international relations has nothing to do with ethics and morality. This subject argues that such a claim does not bear critical scrutiny. The hiving off of the ethical dimension from our understanding of international relations impoverishes the subject beyond recognition. The subject establishes how our understanding of ethics is bound up with a variety of other beliefs about world politics, such as whether we accept a liberal, realist or emancipatory view as our general conceptual framework. The subject also explores how the newer concepts of ethics derived from poststructuralism, postmarxism, feminism and postmodernism shape, or are likely to shape, our conception of international ethics. Other topics covered include theories of ethics in their relation to politics; relativism; the ethics of war; the morality of nuclear deterrence; the ethics of intervention; self-determination; distributive justice; human rights; and the ecological balance.
Assessment Essay (6000 words): 50% + Examination (3 hours): 50%