Contemporary Political Philosophy

Contemporary Political Philosophy: Texts

Course Syllabus

Instructor

Name: Dr Tim Beaumont

Email Address: tbeaumont4@gmail.com

Office hours: by appointment.

Class Time: Tuesdays 7pm – 9.30pm

Class Location: Philosophy Department, Building 16, Room 114

Course Introduction

This is a graduate level course which is designed for students who still need an introduction to the most important debates and writings in normative analytic political philosophy from the last 50 years. Students taking this class will develop their capacity to engage in a close reading of texts, and acquire the background knowledge which is necessary to understand contemporary debates and engage in cutting-edge research.

Class Texts

Recommended background reading:

         ·A. J. Simmons Political Philosophy (OUP: Oxford & New York, 2008).

         ·W. Kymlicka Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, Second Edition, (OUP: Oxford, 2002).

Unless otherwise stated class readings will be taken from the following anthologies:

         ·CC: T. Christiano & J. Christman (ed.) Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy, John Wiley & Sons; 1 edition (2009).

         ·GP1: R. Goodin & P. Pettit (ed.) Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, First Edition, Wiley-Blackwell (1997).

         ·GP2: R. Goodin & P. Pettit (ed.) Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, Second Revised Edition (2005).

         ·HL: H.LaFollette (ed.) Ethics in Practice, Wiley-Blackwell; 3rd Edition edition (2006).

         ·M: D. Miller (ed.) The Liberty Reader, Edinburgh University Press; 2nd Revised edition edition (2006).

         ·MP: D.Matravers & J.Pike (ed.) Debates in Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, Routledge (2003).

Class Schedule

Classes will include a lecture providing an overview of the assigned readings as well as group discussion thereof. The following schedule is provisional as the course will ultimately be tailored to the needs and interests of the students who take the class for credit.    

Week 1: Normative Method

         ·G.A.Cohen ‘Facts and Principles’ CC

         ·Samuel Freeman, ‘Constructivism, Facts, and Moral Justification’ CC

         ·Stephen White ‘Reason and the Ethos of the Late Modern Citizen’ CC

Week 2 – The State

         ·Quentin Skinner ‘The State’ GP1

         ·David Gauthier ‘The Social Contract as Ideology’ GP1

         ·Carole Pateman ‘The Fraternal Social Contract’ GP1

         ·Charles Taylor ‘Invoking Civil Society’ GP1

Week 3 – Democracy I

         ·Jurgen Habermas ‘The Public Sphere’ GP1

         ·Robert Dahl ‘Procedural Democracy’ GP1

         ·Jon Elster ‘The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory’ GP1

         ·Cass Sunstein ‘Preference and Politics’ GP1

Week 4 – Democracy II

         ·Joshua Cohen ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’ GP1

         ·Anne Phillips ‘Dealing with Difference: A Politics of Ideas or a Politics of Presence?’ GP1

         ·Michael Walzer ‘Philosophy and Democracy’ MP

Week 5 – Justice I

         ·John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (excerpts)

         ·Robert Nozick ‘Distributive Justice’ GP1

         ·Brian Barry ‘Chance, Choice and Justice’ GP2

         ·Jeremy Waldron ‘Superseding Historical Injustice’ GP2

Week 6 – Justice II

         ·Michael Sandel ‘The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self’ GP1

         ·Michael Sandel excerpt from Liberalism and the Limits of Justice MP

         ·Amy Gutman ‘Communitarian Critics of Liberalism’ MP

         ·John Rawls ‘The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus’ GP1

         ·Charles Taylor ‘Cross-purposes: the liberal communitarian debate’ MP

Week 7 – Rights I

         ·T. H. Marshall ‘Citizenship and Social Class’GP1

         ·H.L.A. Hart ‘Are There Any Natural Rights?’ GP1

         ·Ronald Dworkin ‘Taking Rights Seriously’ GP1

         ·Henry Shue ‘Basic Rights’ GP1

Week 8 – Rights II

         ·Judith Jarvis Thompson ‘A Defense of Abortion’ GP1

         ·Will Kymlicka ‘Justice and Minority Rights’ GP1

         ·Charles Beitz ‘Human Rights as a Common Concern’ GP2

Week 9 – Liberty I

         ·Isaiah Berlin ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ GP1

         ·Charles Taylor ‘What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty’ GP1

         ·MacCallum ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’ M

         ·Quentin Skinner ‘A Third Concept of Liberty’ GP2

Week 10 – Liberty II

         ·G.A.Cohen ‘The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom’ GP1

         ·G.A.Cohen ‘Are Freedom and Equality Compatible’ GP2

         ·William Galston ‘Liberal Pluralism and Constitutional Democracy: The Case of Freedom of Conscience’ GP2

         ·Jeremy Waldron ‘Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom’ GP1

Week 11 – Political Neutrality & Perfectionism

         ·Joseph Raz The Morality of Freedom (excerpts)

         ·Gerald Gaus, ‘The Moral Foundations of Liberal Neutrality’ (CC)

         ·Stephen Wall ‘Perfectionism in Politics: A Defence’ (CC)

Week 12 – Equality I

         ·Bernard Williams ‘The Idea of Equality’ GP1

         ·Harry Frankfurt ‘Equality as a Moral Ideal’ MP

         ·Derek Parfit ‘Equality and Priority’ GP2

         ·Amartya Sen ‘Equality of What?’ GP1

Week 13 – Equality II

         ·Gerald Cohen ‘Where the action is: on the site of distributive justice’ MP

         ·Michael Walzer ‘Complex Equality’ GP1

         ·Martha Minow ‘Justice Engendered’ GP1

         ·Richard Arneson ‘Egalitarianism and the Undeserving Poor’ GP1

Week 14 – Citizenship and Multiculturalism

         ·Iris Marion Young ‘Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship’ MP

         ·Bhiku Parekh ‘Contemporary liberal responses to diversity’ MP

         ·Brian Barry ‘Theories of Group Rights’ MP

Week 15 – Nationalism

         ·Roger Scruton ‘In Defense of the Nation’ MP

         ·Alaisdair Macintyre ‘Is Patriotism A Virtue?’ MP

         ·David Miller ‘In defence of nationality’ MP

Week 16 – International Affairs I

         ·G.E.M. Anscombe ‘Just War: The Case of World War II’ GP2

         ·Avishali Margalit & Joseph Raz ‘National Self-Determination’ GP2

         ·John Rawls ‘The Law of Peoples’ GP2

Week 17 – International Affairs II

         ·David Luban ‘The Romance of the Nation State’ GP2

         ·David Held ‘Democracy: From City States to Cosmopolitan Order?’ GP2

         ·Robert Keohane, ‘Global Governance and Democratic Accountability’ GP2

         ·Thomas Pogge ‘Migration and Poverty’ GP2

         ·Brian Barry ‘Humanity and Justice in Global Perspective’ GP2

Week 18 – War and Terrorism in Focus

         ·Joseph Boyle ‘Just War Doctrine and the Military Response to Terrorism’ HL

         ·Douglas Lackey ‘Nipping Evil in the Bud: The Questionable Ethics of Preventive Force’ HL

         ·Charles Beitz ‘The Justifiability of Humanitarian Intervention’ HL

          ·William Hawk ‘Pacificism: Reclaiming the Moral Presumption’ HL.

 

Student Assessment

Students will write a final paper taking a position on a contemporary debate in political philosophy. The paper should be double-spaced, written in English, and be of no more than 5000 words and no less than 4500 words (including non-bibliographical footnotes). The paper should be professionally presented, employ structured sub-sectioning, include academic references, and a complete bibliography.