President Michael D Higgins
is to launch a special project with national and international
dimensions in the new year which it is understood will be an initiative
on ethics.
In what would appear to be an
unprecedented step the President will seek to advance discussion on
themes raised by him in speeches delivered at Dublin City University (DCU) last September and at the Sorbonne, Paris, last February and will culminate in a conference at Áras an Uachtaráin in autumn 2014.
A
full programme for the initiative will be announced by the President
early in the new year.
However discussions have taken place with the
heads of some third-level institutions and universities and there has
been a first working group meeting of their representatives.
In the DCU speech, titled “Toward an Ethical
Economy”, Mr Higgins said he strongly believed a new approach, not
focused on the markets and their values, was needed when looking at how
society should be measured. So much of the work of “maintaining and
enhancing human livelihoods takes place outside the market”, he said.
Protocols,
procedures and codes of conduct were derived from an understanding of
the basis of ethics, he said, and suggested philosophy be taught in
schools, as it “could facilitate the fostering of an ethical
consciousness in our fellow citizens”.
At the
Sorbonne he called for a broader concept of European society as one
bound not by economics but by culture, morality and history. “Our
existence, we must remind ourselves, is as social beings, not as
commodified consumers without a history, incapable of envisioning an
alternative future.”
Europe,
he said, needed a discourse based on the recognition that “our global
problems, in an ever more interdependent world, are neither amenable to
any type of previously tested and failed technocratic response, nor are
our challenges merely economic. They are social, political and
cultural.”
Some third-level institutions are
combining subjects to offer a degree in ethics, others are initiating a
series of lectures. Some are setting up forms of engagement on ethical
themes with people in their cities and hinterlands.
The
initiative will initially involve third-level institutions but the
intention is to spread it to wider society. Themes expected to be
prominent during the year include the future of Europe, issues of
interest to young people, the meaning of global dependency.
Other themes
expected to feature include issues of ethics in human rights, within
economic systems, in relations between countries, and how these apply in
the new technological conditions.