Social philosophy 1.S2.MLA.12

Course objectives
- familiarising with relationship dynamics in viarious social groups through a philosophical perspective
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Course content
1. What is Social Philosophy?
Social philosophy focuses on social groups rather than individuals; it frequently assumes that individuals are shaped by social relations in such contexts as freedom, values, religion, politics, language, and others.

2. Positive Freedom and Negative Freedom
Positive Freedom or Positive Liberty is the possibility of acting in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes within a given society. For example, freedom to learn, to travel, to realize happiness in different ways. Negative Freedom or Negative Liberty is the possibility of refusing to do something that is done or suggested by others.

3. Social Conflicts
Most frequent areas of social conflicts: religious, political (dominating group vs. dominated), economic (rich vs. poor), cultural (e.g. Western-Muslim), sexual/gender (e.g. males vs. females), generational (older vs. younger), class, ethnic, identity, many others.

4. What is Society (Society as a whole vs. society as a set of social groups)?
Is society something like an organism whose parts (e.g. ethnic groups and minorities) are its specific and necessary parts, or rather society is a set or a collection of ethnic groups, religious denominations, subcultures, and minorities, each having its specific interests?

5. Social Justice
If we want to know what is just and fair, first we have to know the laws (human, moral, legal, religious) according to which we measure social justice. An important part of the story is to know WHO is responsible for shaping the laws: people? God? Nature? If People, who are these people? International community? National parliaments? Presidents? The Police? Representatives of small communities? The upper classes?

6. Human Rights (and their universality)
The United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (1990)
In the UN Human Rights' Declaration we read that "Everyone has duties to the community (Chapter 29)"; however, The duty for securing human rights typically falls upon national governments and international, inter-governmental bodies because they are best placed and most able to effectively perform the task. So, what's the role of the individuals? of each of us?

7. Power Structure
Any society (e.g. democratic, totalitarian, religious, non-religious, etc) and any collection of social groups (e.g. state, international organization) is organized according to some power structure, with some specific group of people at the top of this communal hierarchy. Social philosophy studies the anatomy (often hidden and unclear) of the relations of power within these groups.

8. The Internet and Social Conflicts
The role of social media in evoking narratives about social conflicts

9. Recognition, Misrecognition, Non-recognition
Charles Taylor's "The Politics of Recognition" is the basic material here: the text of this Canadian philosopher is available on the Internet.

10. Identity
What is identity and what is the relation between social identity and individual identity? Is 'identity' something given or rather it is a task to perform for each of us, for example, by means of 'self-identity' process (cultural auto-creation)?
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Methods of instruction/ forms of classroom activity
multimedia presentation, group discussion, ICT tools/MSTeams, extensive reading, writing