Social/Political Philosophy

Human rights are claims of justice that hold merely in virtue of our shared humanity. In this course we will explore philosophical theories of this elementary and crucial form of justice. Among topics to be considered are the role that dignity and humanity play in grounding such rights, their relation to political and economic institutions, and the distinction between duties of justice and claims of charity or humanitarian aid. Finally we will consider the application of such theories to concrete, problematic and pressing problems, such as global poverty, torture and genocide. (A) (I)

What does it mean to be free? What is a free action? Is freedom an absolute term or actions could be more or less free? Can we act ethically but not freely, i.e., do the right thing, without being free? Can one act freely but not ethically, i.e. freely do the wrong? The relation between the notion of free action and ethics has been central to practical philosophy since antiquity and different ways to answer these questions are at the heart of the main traditions in ethics. We will explore these questions in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant as well as contemporary texts by Korsgaard, Boyle, Rödl and Thompson.

What does it mean to be free? What is a free action? Is freedom an absolute term or actions could be more or less free? Can we act ethically but not freely, i.e., do the right thing, without being free? Can one act freely but not ethically, i.e. freely do the wrong? The relation between the notion of free action and ethics has been central to practical philosophy since antiquity and different ways to answer these questions are at the heart of the main traditions in ethics. We will explore these questions in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant as well as contemporary texts by Korsgaard, Boyle, Rödl and Thompson.

This seminar will study the philosophical background of contemporary legal arguments alluding to the idea of "public morality," in thinkers including Edmund Burke, James Fitzjames Stephen, and Patrick Devlin, and the criticisms of such arguments in thinkers including Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Hart.  We will then study legal arguments on a range of topics, including drugs and alcohol, gambling, nudity, pornography and obscenity, non-standard sex, and marriage. Non-law students are welcome but need permission of the instructors, since space is limited.  We are aiming for a total enrollment of 30, of which up to 10 can be non-law students (no undergraduates), and the rest will be law students, selected by lottery.  Non-law students should apply to both professors by December 1, 2014, describing relevant background, especially in philosophy.

Is capitalism justified on the grounds of natural liberty? Is the legitimate exercise of political power limited by our pre-political rights, especially our property rights? Indeed, is the sole function of a just government to safeguard such rights? We will work towards answers to these questions by evaluating the tradition in political philosophy that has tended to answer them in the affirmative—Libertarianism. We will begin with John Locke, the father of this tradition, devoting several weeks to a close reading of his Second Treatise of Government. We will attend to both his method and his substantive political conclusions. We will consider his distinctive use of a social contract thought experiment involving a moralized conception of practical reason, as well as his defense of private property and limited government. We will then consider the works of contemporary Libertarians such as Robert Nozick and Michael Otsuka who take inspiration from Locke’s method but diverge sharply from one another in their political conclusions. Finally, we will consider contemporary critics of the entire tradition, such as G.A. Cohen, and consider the merits of alternative approaches within the social contract tradition. (A) (I)

In this class we will investigate what it is for a society to be just. In what sense are the members of a just society equal? What freedoms does a just society protect? Must a just society be a democracy? What economic arrangements are compatible with justice? In the second portion of the class we will consider one pressing injustice in our society in light of our previous philosophical conclusions. Possible candidates include, but are not limited to, racial inequality, economic inequality, and gender hierarchy. Here our goal will be to combine our philosophical theories with empirical evidence in order to identify, diagnose, and effectively respond to actual injustice. (A)

From Plato to the present, notions of happiness have been at the core of heated debate in ethics and politics. Is happiness the ultimate good for human beings, the essence of the good life, or is morality somehow prior to it? Can it be achieved by all, or only by a fortunate few? These are some of the questions that this course engages, with the help of both classic and contemporary texts from philosophy, literature, and the social sciences. This course includes various video presentations and other materials stressing visual culture. (A)

This course explores the nature of process of cultural evolution. After establishing a background on the characteristics of biological evolution, we consider topics in cultural evolution that explore similarities and differences between processes of biological and cultural evolution, and theoretical and conceptual innovations necessary to deal with the latter, using a variety of approaches and methodologies, including agent-based modeling, “big data” approaches, and case studies. These will include topics like: the nature of inheritance, the limits of ‘memes’, the role of cognitive development, the coevolution of cognition and lithic technology, the scaffolding and evolution of social support, institutions, organizations and firms, the structure of scientific communities, entrenchment and the emergence of conventions and standards, the role of technology, horizontal vs. vertical transmission, multichannel inheritance, economic markets, the nature of innovation, and the role of history.

Amartya Sen is, of course, a distinguished economist, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize.  But he is also a philosopher whose philosophical thought informs his economic writings and who has long defended the importance of philosophy for economic thought.  This course will study the philosophical aspects of his thought, not attempting to separate them from his economic contributions, which would be wrong, but attempting to focus on the specific contributions Sen has been able to make to economics in virtue of being a philosopher.  We will begin by studying two distinct though related strands of his thought: work on choice, welfare, and measurement, and work on development.  We continue with his influential critique of Utilitarianism on the nature of preference and value, and the importance of equality.  We will then devote substantial time to The Idea of Justice, a major contribution to political philosophy.  Finally, we will examine more recent writings on Indian rationalist philosophy and on religious identity. (I)

Topic: Moral Luck (instructor: P. Brixel)

Late in his career, the English philosopher Bernard Williams wrote, ‘Philosophy, and in particular moral philosophy, is still deeply attached to giving good news.’ In particular, he thought that the philosophical tradition that we have inherited is attached to the consoling thought that how well we live is in the most important respects under our control. This thought can be defended on the basis of a pair of commitments: that how well we live from a moral point of view is under our control, and that moral considerations are the most important considerations. Williams challenged both of these commitments, arguing that morality does not have the supreme importance traditionally attributed to it and that moral value is not immune to luck—that there is such a thing as ‘moral luck’. In this course, we will examine these ideas. More specifically, we will cover three topics: 1. In the first part of the course, we will examine the idea that certain activities or onditions are of supreme importance, all other things being worthless in omparison. This idea is associated with the ancient thought that the virtuous person cannot be harmed. In relation to this idea, will discuss the meaning and the possibility of tragedy. 2. In the second part of the course, we will examine the idea that moral value is immune to luck. We will discuss the problem of moral luck due to incomplete control over the morally significant consequences of one’s actions (‘consequential luck’), moral luck due to incomplete control over morally significant aspects of one’s character (‘constitutive luck’), and moral luck due to ignorance of the moral significance of what one is doing (‘moral ignorance’). 3. Throughout the course, we will aim to gain clarity about the metaphysics of agency, control, luck, and the self.

Topic: Contemporary Liberalism (instructor: J. Butcher)

Liberalism is the dominant tradition of political thought in contemporary political philosophy, and its vocabulary is the lingua franca of the political discourse of Western political societies. One of the chief commitments of liberalism is that a just society is necessarily a free society. Otherwise put, liberalism conceives of citizens as having an overriding interest in some type of freedom. But this abstract commitment is susceptible to a wide variety of competing and incompatible specifications. In this course, we will examine the ways in which various liberal political philosophers have specified the notion of freedom and conceived of its role in the just society. The guiding questions of the course are: (1) What does it mean to say that citizens have a fundamental interest in freedom, and (2) What obligations of justice does this fundamental interest generate on the part of the state? We will begin by reading a sizeable portion of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (weeks 1-3), which contains his argument that citizens have a right to a set of basic liberties that cannot be given up even if it is in citizens’ economic interest to do so. In week 4, we will consider an objection to Rawls’s argument advanced by H.L.A. Hart and Rawls’s response. Next, we will consider various alternatives to Rawls’s approach (weeks 5-6), namely those of Joseph Raz, Philip Pettit, and Martha Nussbaum. These alternatives conceive of freedom as autonomy (the capacity to make certain choices), non-domination (freedom from dependence on the choices of others), and capability (the opportunity to develop one’s capacities to become a fully functioning human being), respectively.  We will then move onto a view called political liberalism (weeks 7-9). This view holds a conception of freedom according to which a citizen is free when he is capable of endorsing the legal framework of his society - in particular the way this framework employs coercive power against and determines the life chances of citizens. We will conclude (week 10) with Joseph Raz’s influential criticism of this view.

Topic: Philosophical Conceptions of Pleasure in Classical Antiquity (instructor: D. Jagannathan)

What is pleasure? In what way is it valuable? How does pleasure relate to action, passion, and the good life? These are the questions we shall investigate in this course by working through the leading theories of pleasure in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy from Aristippus of Cyrene through Plato and Aristotle down to the Stoics and the Epicureans. In addition to proceeding chronologically and seeing how later thinkers respond to or refine the arguments of earlier ones, the course will take up three broad themes: (i) the value of pleasure, (ii) what sorts of pleasures there are and whether pleasure is unified, and (iii) how pleasure figures in goal-directed behavior in us and in animals. The final week of the course will be devoted to the reception of ancient ideas about pleasure in two modern thinkers, John Stuart Mill and Gilbert Ryle. Some experience working with Plato and Aristotle is desirable; no knowledge of Greek or Latin is required.