Lectures

One can no longer ignore the fact that, in the last decade, the web has turned into—among other things—the world intellectuals’ playground.

Not least, the web’s wild virtual plains are, equally, a mind-boggling archive for human presentations of knowledge that until recently were terminally inaccessible.

This historic shift in knowledge distribution has not overlooked the subject matter of Ethics. The contrary is true. Not only has the WWW’s ethics become the most urgent matter of concern for anyone who understands the dangers of this digital universe, but, more interestingly from our perspective, it has turned into an arena in which one can learn about ethics in a way never before possible.

In the collection below of over 100 free YouTube lectures about diverse manifestations of ethics, we aim to demonstrate how learning about ethics and studying ethics is changing as we speak.

Who among us imagined, until recently, that s.he could listen to one the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, whose grandfather lived at the time of the French Revolution? Well, please welcome a few of Sir Bertrand Russell’s most pleasing appearances on 1950s UK television. Further, this is only one of the many staggering examples that this collection suggests to those who are curious, beyond what words can tell.

In this collection, one can find the finest lecturers on subjects that coincide with the Lab’s core teaching: Aristotle, Dao, Confucius, Kant, Mill, Simone de Beauvoir, and Ethics of Care.

In addition, the collection comprises a set of conversations and presentations on Metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.

Another critical focus is the subject of Global Ethics. It has become clearer that CILECT’s distinguished contribution to the world resides, among other perspectives, in being a truly global association of members.

This consciousness, not new in the historical discourse of ideas, pushes The Ethics Lab to perform and respond to this challenge. In its spirit we ask: “In what way can CILECT’s community of film schools share its rich cultural and philosophical heritage without falling prey to the lure of political correctness or reductive moralistic relativism? In this world picture, after all, everything, to begin with, becomes permissible because “this is how we do it here” says one, and “this is how we do it here” says the other. Therein lies the danger that no true conversation can develop, because we are bound to accept the position in which we cannot hurt one another’s cultural feelings. With this concern in mind, we collected some outstanding lectures on the growing matter of concern entitled “Global Ethics.” We intend to pursue our effort to understand the matter and reflect on it, more and more, through these lectures and, equally, through The Ethics Lab‘s core teaching. Only this year did we add two enormous perspectives to our teaching: Dao and Confucian ethics. We intend to expand this body of global perspectives: Obunto, Pacha Mama, Aboriginal, and American indigenous ethics; north and south, east and west. Evidence for this metaphysical shift in perspectives exists in the actual teaching outcomes of students from around the world—from Bogota, Colombia, to Beijing, China.

We remain hopeful that this collection of lectures will bring pleasure and increase one’s passion for listening to more fabulous presentations about ethics.

As we have made clear, we believe that ETHICS is the most exciting and fun subject to be found on the web, and we hope you will join us.

You are warmly invited to write to us using the “Comment” box below. Propose to us insightful lectures that we have thus far overlooked. Please share with us your findings. We promise to share them with all our friends.