Dan Brudney

Since the 17th century, the social contract has been a central metaphor to characterize the conditions under which political authority is legitimate.  However, the content of the social contract and its imagined mode of coming into being have varied widely.  In this course we will try to delineate the conditions that might make the concept of a social contract a plausible way to justify political authority.  We will read Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and Rawls.  We will focus on these writers’ conceptions of the person, on their views of how such conceptions generate specific institutional arrangements, and on their accounts of the justification of state power. (A)

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in the Autumn Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in the Winter Quarter. The Senior Seminar meets for two quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

Abortion is a complex and fraught topic. Morally, a very wide range of individual, familial, and social concerns converge upon it. Politically, longstanding controversies have been given new salience and urgency by the Dobbs decision and the ongoing moves by state legislatures to restrict access to abortion. In terms of moral philosophy, deep issues in ethics merge with equally deep questions about the nature of life, action, and the body. In terms of political philosophy, basic questions are raised about the relationship of religious and moral beliefs to the criminal law of a liberal state. We will seek to understand the topic in all of this complexity. Our approach will be thoroughly intra- and inter-disciplinary, drawing not only on our separate areas of philosophical expertise but on the contributions of a series of guest instructors in law, history, and medicine. (A)

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in the Autumn Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in the Winter Quarter. The Senior Seminar meets for two quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

Decisions about medical treatment and medical policy often have profound moral implications. Taught by three philosophers, a physician, and a medical lawyer, this course will examine such issues as paternalism, autonomy, informed consent, assisted suicide, abortion, organ markets, distributive justice in health care, and pandemic ethics. (A)

John Locke’s political philosophy contributed mightily to the English and American constitutions.  It is still a significant force in modern debates about rights and the criteria of political legitimacy.  We begin the course with Locke’s Second Treatise of Government and go on to read his important “A Letter Concerning Toleration.”  Issues to be addressed include Locke’s conception of the state of nature, his explanation of the need for a political society, and his justifications of economic inequality and the right of revolution.

We then turn to a very different writer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  Rousseau has been read as defending, among other things, liberalism, totalitarianism, civic republicanism, and communism.  We will read his First and Second Discourses, On the Social Contract, and parts of the short essay On the Government of Poland.  Issues to be addressed include Rousseau’s account of developmental psychology, his conception of the initial political agreement, the nature of the General Will, the role of the Legislator, and what is meant by his infamous claim that citizens can be “forced to be free.”  Our goal is to grasp Locke and Rousseau in their historical and intellectual contexts but also to determine what is true and vital in their views. (A)

For many decades John Rawls’s theory of “justice as fairness” has been criticized from the left. One recurrent criticism is that justice as fairness cannot respond to the social pathologies that afflict modern societies. The criticism says (i) Rawls’s ideal society (his “well-ordered society”) cannot forestall the presence of significant social pathologies, and (ii) no alteration of justice as fairness that successfully responds to such pathologies could remain within a broadly liberal tradition. In the first half of the course we will read parts of A Theory of Justice as well as other Rawls writings to set the conceptual stage. In the second half we will read several recent writers from the tradition of the Frankfurt School (Axel Honneth, Rahel Jaeggi, Fabien Freyenhagen) as well as others (e.g., Miranda Fricker) who focus on social pathologies. We will ask whether (i) is true and, if it is, whether (ii) is true. (A)

In this course we will look at central texts by Hume and Rousseau.  We will be trying to understand them in their own terms, not as precursors to, say, Kant.  We will connect these writers to other intellectual movements of their time, reading works of fiction along with the philosophical texts.  Writers to be read include Butler, Diderot, Hume, Rousseau and Austen. (A)

Kant is a watershed in political philosophy (as he is everywhere).  This often means that earlier work gets read as “pre-Kantian.”  In this course we will look at central texts by Hume and Rousseau in order to understand them in their own terms.  We will connect these writers to another non-Kantian, the early Marx.  The goal is to find, develop and assess ways of thinking of the tasks of political philosophy that do not presuppose a Kantian framework.

Decisions about medical treatment, medical research and medical policy often have profound moral implications.  Taught by a philosopher, three physicians, and a medical lawyer, this course will examine such issues as paternalism, autonomy, assisted suicide, abortion, organ markets, research ethics, and distributive justice in health care. (A)

Decisions about medical treatment, medical research, and medical policy often have profound moral implications. Taught by a philosopher, two physicians, and a medical lawyer, this course will examine such issues as paternalism, autonomy, assisted suicide, kidney markets, abortion, and research ethics. (A)

Political philosophy is always of its time, yet many political philosophies have tried to be deeply critical of their times.  The seminar will investigate different ways to justify such criticism.  We will look first at Rousseau and the young Marx, and then turn to recent writers such as Rawls, Walzer, Anderson, Waldron, Horkheimer/Adorno and Jaeggi. (I)

The exercise of state power is supposed to pass a test of "legitimacy." However, it has been difficult to find a legitimacy criterion that is both compelling and satisfiable. In Political Liberalism John Rawls proposes a criterion of legitimacy that he thinks will be compelling, satisfiable, and, crucially, acceptable to a wide range of citizens' (reasonable) fundamental beliefs (or, as he calls them, "comprehensive doctrines"). Rawls's proposal has been criticized in many ways. In the seminar we will go through and try to understand the structure and content of Rawls's political liberal view. We will then examine several challenges to his criterion of legitimacy. Finally, we will look at a challenge that stems from work by recent writers of the Frankfurt School. This challenge says (i) Rawls's legitimacy criterion does not preclude significant "social pathologies" associated with a capitalist economy, and (ii) no criterion of legitimacy that could preclude these pathologies would be consistent with the basic agenda of political liberalism. The seminar will read work by Rawls, Colin Bird, Corey Brettschneider, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth and Rahel Jaeggi. (I)