Debating Justice

POLI70611 Debating Justice 15 Semester 1 Postgraduate Taught Level 7 Jonathan Benson Unit coordinator Politics 1 FHEQ level (Framework for Higher Education Qualifications) ' Masters/Integrated Masters P4 ' European Credit Transfer & Accumulation System Rating : 7.5 John Rawls famously claimed that “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.” Social institutions are just if they organise social cooperation so as to distribute its benefits and burdens in the appropriate manner. The aim of a theory of justice is to identify what that appropriate manner is. In this course, students will examine the strengths and weaknesses of the best liberal egalitarian, libertarian, feminist, Marxist, and republican approaches to justice offered in recent debates. Students will critically examine the work of John Rawls, Susan Okin, Robert Nozick, Elizabeth Anderson, G.A. Cohen, Virginia Held and Philipp Pettit, among others, and test the theories studied by applying them to issues such as disability, labour, and social cooperation; domination and exploitation; and different kinds of inequality - political, economic, gender, and racial.  This is a course in contemporary normative political theory. It aims to introduce postgraduate students to normative analysis and philosophical reasoning through the critical study of contemporary political theory over the past forty years. On completion of this unit successful students will be able to:<ul> <li> Employ a rigorous analytical approach in critically evaluating the key theories of justice in contemporary Anglophone political theory.</li></ul><ul> <li> Examine and critique the central claims of liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, feminism, Marxism, and republicanism.</li> <li> Develop their own responses to urgent and theoretically complex problems of justice.</li></ul> Teaching will take place in weekly two-hour seminars. Students will be assigned reading and preparatory questions for each week, and will take turns presenting the readings. 0 Other 25% 2 Written assignment (inc essay) 75% Presentation - 25%2000 word essay - 75% N The following are useful introductory works.<ul> <li>Kymlicka, Will. Contemporary Political Philosophy: 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.</li> <li>Goodin & Pettit (eds.) Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology Oxford: Wiley Blackwell 2019</li> <li>Olsaretti, Serena (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018.</li></ul> Seminars 20 0 130