Transdisciplinary Program
Applied Ethics
The Transdisciplinary Program Applied Ethics is open to students of all faculties. Primarily it is offered within the open credit point range of bachelor and master courses. The introductory and the advanced modules (5 credit points each) ensure an interdisciplinary basic education in applied ethics.
Lecturers from the different faculties of the University of Basel support this program. The coordination of the program is with the Institute for Biomedical Ethics, headed by Prof. Dr Bernice Elger.
The students become familiar with the basic positions of ethics and become able to discover ethic dimensions of questions arising from the individual lifestyle, professional action, science and the political system and they will learn scientific methods to deal with these questions.
The Program Applied Ethics imparts the intellectual means, which allow discussing and solving ethical issues. It provides its students with the ability to systematically take the views of affected people, to argue in their interest and to weigh the arguments. It aims to build up and strengthen the personal ethical power of judgement.
We recommend bachelor students to complete the basic module (to acquire 5 credit points from the modules A and B) and then do the advanced module (modules C and D).
Advanced students and students doing a doctorate or a PhD may compile their individual program.
Courses of the program Applied Ethics are accredited for studies in Philosophy (8 or 6 semester hours per week in the major or minor subject, respectively) and for Law Studies (ask your study coordinator about a learning contract concerning the appropriate ETCS).
Nowadays ethical questions are discussed in various areas of daily life and professional fields, and professional and public dialogs overlap resulting in additional issues of understanding and participation. Therefore applied ethics is interdisciplinary and includes socially relevant topics.
The program teaches methods to understand, analyse and judge ethical questions and problems. When discussing the main subjects during the program, always different views, lines of arguments and controversial issues will be investigated. This allows testing your own ethical positions, to reflect on them and to reason for them.
The courses involve specific problems and projects and thus facilitate an ethical dialogue within various discipline and professional fields, for example in health care, sustainable development or contemporary history.
Changing lectures, tutorials, seminars and additional offers.
A certificate of applied ethics is awarded for studying a whole package (5 credit points from modules A and B plus 5 credit points from modules C and D) and writing a paper of approx. 10 pages on a subject from module D.