Baroness Onora O’Neill will deliver this year’s McCosh Lecture at Queen’s University Belfast on Friday 10 May from 2pm. This is a free event and requires no registration.

WHAT OUGHT WE DO?

Ethical inquiry in Western traditions traditionally asked what we should do, and offered accounts of various types of required action or duty. However, since the early twentieth century concern with duty has often been seen as problematic and rejected. Subsequent normative inquiry has typically addressed narrower questions. A great deal of writing in political and legal philosophy focuses on rights and entitlements, while construing the rest of ethics as a ‘merely’ personal matter. A great deal of writing in ethics either focuses on subjective conceptions of virtue and preference, or addresses aspects of ‘applied’ ethics that assume
institutional preconditions. Baroness O’Neill shall argue that this narrowing of horizons is unnecessary and can be reversed.

PROGRAMME

2.00 pm   Welcome by Professor David Livingstone (Chair, Religious Studies Forum)

2.05 pm   Introduction by Professor Richard English,(Pro-Vice Chancellor for Internationalisation and Engagement)

2.10 pm   Lecture – What Ought We Do?

3.00 pm  Discussion and Open Forum

3.45 pm   Refreshments