SYLLABUS: ETHICS AND WORLD HUNGER
Honors 321U,  Fall 2005

Thurs: 2:10-3:00 Rm 3379 Food Sci.


Instructors:
    Clark Ford

    2567 Food Sciences

    294-0343
    cfford@iastate.edu

 

    Clark Wolf

    435 Catt Hall
    294-3068\

    jwcwolf@iastate.edu

 

Class website: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jwcwolf/ClassSyllabi/hon321u.html

Grading: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Requirements:   
            Attendance at all class meetings.

            Weekly reading assignments.

            Team Project and Presentation. 

                       

Objectives:  Two hundred and fifty years ago,  the French philosopher Jean Jaques Rousseau considered the poverty and inequality he found around himself.  Contrasting the rich splendor of the French aristocracy and the desperate poverty of the wider population,  he concluded that poverty and  inequality were unnatural and morally indefensible.  In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality,  He wrote "It is obviously contrary to the law of nature, however it may be defined for a child to command an old man, for an imbecile to lead a wise man, and for a handful of people to gorge themselves on superfluities while the starving multitude lacks necessities."  The world we live in is far richer than 1750 France, but if anything our world is marked by more poverty and more inequality than the world of Rousseau.  Although we live in a world of plenty,  a huge number of people in our world live in conditions of deep poverty and food insecurity.   Like Rousseau, we live in a world in which some are able to "gorge themselves on superfluities" while others lack basic necessities.  As fortunate members of a wealthy society in a world that contains desperate want, can we justify the comforts we enjoy?  Is world hunger simply a problem,  an unfortunate feature of our world, or is it our problem?  If poverty and radical inequality are unjust,  as Rousseau argues they are,  then are we unjust when we participate in a system that affords us such benefits?

The problem of world hunger presses many important questions upon us:  practical questions ("What measures can we take?"), explanatory questions ("What are the causes of hunger?  How did it get this way?), and moral questions ("What obligations do we have with respect to those who are hungry and poor?"). 

In this course we will  read and discuss historical and contemporary works that  address the problem of world hunger from different perspectives.  Among the questions we will address are the following:  What are the causes of hunger?  Are we causally responsible for (some of) the hunger in the world?  Are we perpetrators or hunger, or merely bystanders?  Do we have obligations to aid distant people who are poor and hungry?  Is hunger simply a problem, or is it our problem?  Will feeding the hungry simply increase the rate of population growth, leading to even more hunger and suffering?  Will modern agriculture alleviate the problem of world hunger, or is it part of the problem?   Is the inequality we see in the world around us natural and unavoidable,  or is it unnatural and avoidable? 

Class Schedule:


Aug 25: Introduction to the Course


Sept 1: Ethics and World Hunger:

Reading : Clark Ford, Ethics and Hunger


Sept 8: Poverty and Hunger
Reading: Jeffrey Sachs,  How to End Poverty, and UN Millennium Development Goals,

Sept 15: Do we have a Duty to Aid?
Reading:  Singer,  "Famine, Affluence, and Morality."


Sept 22: Responding to the Needs of Others

Reading: Barry Bearak, "Why People Still Starve."

Sept  29: The Origins of Inequality I: Rousseau
Reading: From the Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.


Oct 6:The Origins of Inequality II: Diamond
Reading: Jared Diamond. TBA


Oct 13: Is there an obligation not to aid others?
Reading: Hardin, "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor."


Oct 20: Population and Poverty

Reading:  Amartya Sen,  "Population: Delusion and Reality."


Oct 27: Perpetrators or Bystanders?
Reading:  Listen to interview with Thomas Pogge and Hugh LaFollette,  World Poverty and Global Justice. 


Nov 3: Bioethics and the Third World
Reading:  Vandana Shiva: "Bioethics: A Third World Issue"

Nov 10: Is there a Right to Food?
Reading: Hugh LaFollette and Larry May, "Suffer the Children..."


Nov 17: Ethics and Development
Reading: Balakrishnan & Naryan, "Combining Justice with Development: Rethinking Rights and Responsibilities in the Context of World Hunger and Poverty."


Nov 24: Thanksgiving.


Dec 1: Student Presentations


Dec 8: Student Presentations