Social/Political Philosophy

In this class we will explore questions of justice that arise in and around work. We will consider concepts such as exploitation and domination as they apply to workers under capitalism. We will explore the foundation of the right to strike, and the right to form a union. We will consider the merits of different justifications for workplace democracy and worker control. We will explore the role of domestic injustice in sustaining wage inequality for women, and consider the relationship of race to capitalism. We explore these topics through a variety of normative lenses, drawing on cutting edge work in the liberal, neo-republican, Marxist, feminist, and human rights traditions. (A)

Are some acts wrong "whatever the consequences"? Do consequences matter when acting for the sake of duty, or virtue, or what is right? How do "consequentialist" ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, address such issues? This course will address these questions by critically examining some of the most provocative defenses of consequentialism in the history of philosophy, from the work of the classical utilitarians Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick to that of Peter Singer, one of the world's most influential living philosophers and the founder of the animal liberation and effective altruism movements. Does consequentialism lend itself to the Panoptical nightmares of the surveillance state, or can it be a force for a genuinely emancipatory ethics and politics? (A)

Perhaps it is better to give than to receive, but exactly how much giving ought one to engage in and to whom or what?  Recent ethical and philosophical developments such as the effective altruism movement suggest that relatively affluent individuals are ethically bound to donate a very large percentage of their wealth to worthy causes—for example, saving as many lives as they possibly can, wherever in the world those lives may be.  And charitable giving or philanthropy is not only a matter of individual giving, but also of giving by foundations, corporations, non-profits, non-governmental and various governmental agencies, and other organizational entities that play a very significant role in the modern world. How, for example, does an institution like the University of Chicago engage in and justify its philanthropic activities? Can one generalize about the various rationales for philanthropy, whether individual or institutional? Why do individuals or organizations engage in philanthropy, and do they do so well or badly, for good reasons, bad reasons, or no coherent reasons?

This course will afford a broad, critical philosophical and historical overview of philanthropy, examining its various contexts and justifications, and contrasting charitable giving with other ethical demands, particularly the demands of justice. How do charity and justice relate to each other?  Would charity even be needed in a fully just world?  And does philanthropy in its current forms aid or hinder the pursuit of social justice, in both local and global contexts?  Readings will include such works as Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save and David Callahan’s The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, and there will be a number of special guest speakers. The course will be developed in active conversation with the work of the UChicago Civic Knowledge Project and Office of Civic Engagement, and students will be presented with some practical opportunities to engage reflectively in deciding whether, why and how to donate a certain limited amount of (course provided) funding. (A)

Many of the toughest ethical and political challenges confronting the world today are related to environmental issues: for example, climate change, loss of biodiversity, the unsustainable use of natural resources, pollution, and other threats to the well-being of both present and future generations.  Using both classic and contemporary works, this course will highlight some of the fundamental and unavoidable philosophical questions presented by such environmental issues.  What do the terms “nature” and “wilderness” even mean, and can “natural” environments as such have ethical and/or legal standing?  Does the environmental crisis demand radically new forms of ethical and political philosophizing and practice?  Must an environmental ethic reject anthropocentrism?  If so, what are the most plausible non-anthropocentric alternatives?  What counts as the proper ethical treatment of non-human animals, living organisms, or ecosystems?  What fundamental ethical and political perspectives inform such approaches as the “Land Ethic,” ecofeminism, and deep ecology?  Is there a plausible account of justice for future generations?  Are we now in the Anthropocene?  Is “adaptation” the best strategy at this historical juncture?  How can the wild, the rural, and the urban all contribute to a better future for Planet Earth? (A)

Traditionally, epistemologists have concerned themselves with the individual: What should I believe? What am I in a position to know? How should my beliefs guide my decision-making? But we can also ask each of these questions about groups. What should we -- the jury, the committee, the scientific community--believe? What can we know? How should our beliefs guide our decision-making? These are some of the questions of social epistemology Social epistemology also deals with the social dimensions of individual opinion:  How should I respond to disagreement with my peers? When should I defer to majority opinion? Are there distinctively epistemic forms of oppression and injustice?  If so, what are they like and how might we try to combat them? This class is a broad introduction to social epistemology. (B) (III) 

It is often said in contemporary literature that the difference between different types of democracies, like democratic Republic and Constitutional Monarchy, is a superficial one compared to the true relevant divide of modernity between democratic societies and non-democratic societies. The problem with such a divide is that it entails the reduction of Modern Constitutional Monarchies to decorative regimes - in other words to a variety of Republic. 

The goal of our seminar is to go back to the French post-revolutionary period in order to examine what has been called the « British moment » of the French Intellectual History because of its quest for the foundation of a Liberal and Constitutional Monarchy in France. 

That period deals with the difficult intellectual challenge for French thinkers to overcome Absolutism in favor of Democracy without rejecting Monarchy as such. 

The « British moment » of the French Intellectual History represents then a transitional - and mostly forgotten -moment between the old regime and the contemporary French Republic. Such a particular moment of French History can be decomposed into three main sub-moments and opens three main intellectual, historical and philosophical sequences: 1789 and the debates about the role of the Monarch in the context of « Popular Sovereignty ». The important thinkers of that period we are going to read are J. Necker and Madame de Staël (and some of Rousseau). 

Then 1814, when after Napoleon’s fall France restored the Monarchy through the form of a Constitutional Monarchy. France’s intellectual life will be divided between Conservative Monarchists like Bonald and Chateaubriand and Liberal Monarchists like Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville whose thoughts are going to prepare the advent of the Liberal period of French Monarchy after 1830’s Revolution. The goal of our careful readings of Rousseau, Necker, Staël, Bonald Chateaubriand, Constant, Tocqueville and others will be to make sense of what became in current debates about democracy mostly incomprehensible: in which way the nature of the democratic regime makes a difference to the concept of democracy one speaks about.

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)

Most of us seek to be reasonably good people leading what we take to be successful and satisfying lives. There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that most of us fail to live up to our own standards. Worse, we often fail to mark our own failures in ways that could help us improve ourselves. The context in which we try to live good lives is shaped by the vicissitudes of the global economy. The global economy is obviously of interest to those of us studying economics or planning on careers in business. Aspiring entrepreneurs or corporate leaders have clear stakes in understanding practical wisdom in the economic sphere. But anyone who relies upon her pay - or someone else's - to cover her living expenses has some interest in economic life.

In this course, we will bring work in neo-Aristotelian ethics and neo-classical economics into conversation with empirical work from behavioral economics and behavioral ethics, to read, write, talk, and think about cultivating wisdom in our economic dealings. While our focus will be on business, the kinds of problems we will consider, and the ways of addressing these, occur in ordinary life more generally - at home, in academic settings, and in our efforts to participate in the daily production and reproduction of sound modes of social interaction. (A)

This course centers on a close reading of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, with some attention to his writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. How should a history of sexuality take into account scientific theories, social relations of power, and different experiences of the self? We discuss the contrasting descriptions and conceptions of sexual behavior before and after the emergence of a science of sexuality. Other writers influenced by and critical of Foucault are also discussed.

The course is an introduction to the major varieties of philosophical feminism. After studying some key historical texts in the Western tradition (Wollstonecraft, Rousseau, J. S. Mill), we examine four types of contemporary philosophical feminism: Liberal Feminism (Susan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum), Radical Feminism (Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin), Difference Feminism (Carol Gilligan, Annette Baier, Nel Noddings), and Postmodern "Queer" Gender Theory and trans femism (Judith Butler, Michael Warner and others). After studying each of these approaches, we will focus on political and ethical problems of contemporary international feminism, asking how well each of the approaches addresses these problems. (A)