Nancy Tuana on Ethics and the G-20
The recent G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh saw world leaders focusing on sound and sustainable measures for recovering from the global financial and economic crisis. At the same time, Penn State Outreach asked academic leaders at Penn State to contribute to a series of reflections on the significance of the G-20 from various disciplinary perspectives. Nancy Tuana, director of Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute, provides us with an argument that any attempt to address the goals of the G-20 must have ethics at it’s core.
Sustainability, according to Tuana, cannot be understood in purely economic terms. Our commitments to things such as social and environmental development, justice, and human rights are what allow us to determine whether or not some proposal for economic reform is a truly sustainable one. Since these commitments are clearly ethical in nature, there can be no doubt that ethics has to be at the center of the work of the G-20.
To see the rest of the series, visit Penn State Outreach on YouTube:
