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What’s the ‘good’ in the good fight? Questions for ethical thinking in strange times

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If we peel back religion, politics, economics and other big players in our collective pursuit of the ‘common good’ … what do we end up with? How are our ideas of goodness formed – and can they ever be agreed upon?

As globalisation and technology draw the world closer together, they’ve also revealed chasms in how we relate to each other as nations, cultures and individuals – and how we resolve conflicts. What happens when good intentions are incompatible?

We’ve assembled a diverse and insightful group of thinkers to thrash out the practical questions of ethics. Raimond Gaita, Anne Summers, Gregory Phillips and Alan Duffy will come together to seek out and dissect: are there basic values or ideas of goodness or fairness that we can all share? What, specifically, are they? What even is ‘ethical’, should we strive for it – and can there be a middle ground? Hosted by Mark Colvin. 




 

Featuring

Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita has published widely to academic and non- academic audiences. In 2009, the University of Antwerp awarded Gaita the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa ‘for his exceptional contribution to contemporary moral philosophy and for his singular contribution to the role of the intellectual in to... Read more

Anne Summers

Dr Anne Summers AO is a journalist, researcher, commentator and best-selling author of nine books, including the classic Damned Whores and God’s Police, first published in 1975, and still in print. Her most recent book Unfettered and Alive, a memoir, was published in 2018. In 2021 Anne was appoint... Read more

Gregory Phillips

Gregory Phillips is from the Waanyi and Jaru peoples, and comes from Cloncurry and Mount Isa. He is a medical anthropologist, with thirty years’ experience in leading change in cultural safety, healing and decolonisation.Gregory is Chief Executive Officer of ABSTARR Consulting, is a Professor of... Read more

Alan Duffy

Associate Professor Duffy is an astrophysicist at Swinburne University creating baby universes on supercomputers to understand how galaxies like our Milky Way form and grow within vast halos of invisible dark matter. He is attempting to find this dark matter as part of SABRE, the world’s first da... Read more

Mark Colvin

Mark Colvin is an Australian journalist, filmmaker and broadcaster. He has been the presenter of PM, one of the flagship Australian radio current affairs programs on the ABC Radio network, since 1997. As a foreign correspondent, Mark covered such major stories as the American hostage crisi... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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