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Course proposal bleg: contemporary theories of justice

I'm putting together a new course proposal for an upper-level undergraduate seminar entitled, "Contemporary Theories of Justice." However, I haven't taught a course like this in a while, and would like to put together a really great syllabus: one that exposes students to cutting-edge work from a diverse variety of perspectives. Because it's hard to keep abreast of everything out there (my own research interests have at least temporarily drifted away from theorizing about justice), I'd like to ask you, the Cocoon readers, for some recommendations.

Which book(s)/articles/authors do you consider "must-reads" for a course like the one I described above? Why? Many thanks in advance to everyone who chimes in!

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13 responses to “Course proposal bleg: contemporary theories of justice”

  1. Da_Philosopher

    A Theory of Justice- John Rawls
    Anarchy, State, & Utopia- Robert Nozick
    The Idea of Justice- Amartya Sen

    Reply
  2. Lisa

    In addition to the classics such as Rawls, Nozick, Sen: something on global justice, something on gender justice, something on philosophy of race, something on epistemic justice (Fricker).

    Reply
  3. Anony Mouse

    Justice and the Politics of Difference – Iris Marion Young

    Reply
  4. Paul Kelleher

    A lot of theorizing about justice in recent years has focused on the value of equality and its place in a larger theory of social justice. G. A. Cohen’s work, including his book Rescuing Justice and Equality is a central contribution here. So too are the works that make up the “relational egalitarianism” response to luck-egalitarian views like Cohen’s. Elizabeth Anderson’s “What is the Point of Equality?” and Samuel Scheffler’s “What is Equalitarianism?” are the best known, but in my view each has a follow-up paper that is better for getting at the heart of the debate between luck egalitarians and relational egalitarians. These others papers are Anderson’s “The Fundamental Disagreement between Luck and Relational Egalitarianism” (Canadian J. of Phil., supplementary volume 36) and Scheffler’s “The Practice of Equality” (in C. Fourie, F. Schuppert, and I. Wallimann-Helmer, Social Equality: Essays on What it Means to be Equals (Oxford)).

    Reply
  5. Marcus Arvan

    Thanks so much for the suggestions so far–feel free to keep ’em coming!

    Reply
  6. Brad

    Excerpts from Walzer’s Spheres of Justice are certainly worth reading.

    Reply
  7. Clarence

    If you cover Rawls, you could usefully look at the exchange between Charles Mills and Tommie Shelby (among others) over how Rawls handles race.
    http://tinyurl.com/p6yhc4g

    Reply
  8. Kristina Meshelski

    Hey Marcus, if you are interested I put a syllabus for a contemporary political philosophy course on my academia.edu
    https://www.academia.edu/12520853/Phil_403_Contemporary_Philosophy_focus_on_political_philosophy_
    Not exactly “theories of justice” but I tried to focus on what I think are good papers from the last ten years that don’t require a lot of background reading to understand. Though I did start with a traditional Rawls, Nozick, and Carens as a starting point. (Carens turned out to be easier than Cohen to include as my socialist that disagrees with Rawls person.)

    Reply
  9. Marcus Arvan

    Brad, Clarence, and Kristina: Thanks for the suggestions!

    Reply
  10. Michael Deem

    Since it will be an upper-level undergraduate course, ‘Measuring Justice’ (eds. Brighouse and Robeyns) is a fantastic volume for getting a handle on what’s at stake in the debate over primary goods and capabilities approaches to justice.
    In addition to the great suggestions above, here are a few other ideas:
    Nussbaum’s ‘Creating Capabilities’ is a very good and accessible overview of the capabilities approach.
    Sections from Abbey’s ‘The Return of Feminist Liberalism’ would be good background reading for any works by Okin, Nussbaum, and Hampton you might assign.
    I really like Cohen’s ‘Why Not Socialism?’ for undergraduate courses in political philosophy

    Reply
  11. Justin Caouette

    Marcus, I just taught an upper level social/political philosophy class and it went great. The first 3rd of the course was on conceptions of Justice (Plato and the usual suspects), the next 3rd of the course was on theories of punishment. Here, we tied the theories of justice to the different conceptions of punishment and this helped student get a grasp on the initial theories of justice as well. Lastly, we focused on blaming practices and how or why they might differ from the practices of punishment. Here, I also tried to tie conceptions of justice to our practices of blame. I could send over the syllabus of you were interested. It was a condensed class (6 weeks and we met twice a week for 3 hours each meeting). FWIW, it was my first time teaching the material and teaching an upper level class and the evals suggested the students loved the content and the structure.

    Reply
  12. Hanno Sauer

    I would make sure to include stuff on left-libertarianism (Otsuka, Vallentyne, etc.), property-owning democracy (see the book edited by Williamson and O’Neill), traditional libertarianism (e. g. Tomasi’s Market Fairness or Brennan/Jaworski’s Market Without Limits), market socialism (David Miller, David Schweickhart), “separation of social spheres” theories (Walzer, Sandel, Satz), theories of recognition (e. g. Axel Honneth) and also something on the politics and economics of the welfare state (e. g. Heath, Three Normative Models of the Welfare State).

    Reply
  13. Jennifer McCrickerd

    What did you end up with and how did it go? I’m going to be teaching such a course next fall. The last time I taught it I had students read Nozick’s, Anarchy, State and Utopia; Rawls’ Justice as Fairness: A Restatement; Dworkin’s Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality, Cohen’s
    Rescuing Justice and Equality and Nussbuam’s Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice.
    I’m thinking that I want to change it (though I’ll probably keep at least some of these) and so am interested in how things went for you.

    Reply

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