Political science 2711

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Saint Joseph’s University
THEORIES OF JUSTICE
Political Science 2711
Spring 2006
Tuesday and Wednesday, 3:00-4:15 p.m.
Barbelin 112G
Dr. Susan P. Liebell
Office: Barbelin 105 E-mail: sliebell@sju.edu
Office Hours: Weds, 10-12; Fri, 10-1 Phone: 610-660-1919/1917
and by appointment
This political theory seminar examines some of the major theories of justice available to politicaltheorists in the
21st century. We begin with an indepth reading of the work that has defined justice in the 20th and 21st
centuries: John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. We continue by considering alternative theories of justice and
criticisms of Rawls: Robert Nozick (libertarianism); Susan Okin (liberal feminism); and Michael Sandel and
Alasdair MacIntyre (communitarinism). We will also consider worksby Michael Walzer, Ronald Dworkin, Brian
Barry, and Amartya Sen. The seminar concludes with a return to the “late” Rawls of Political Liberalism and his
work on international justice, The Law of Peoples.
Learning Goals and Assessments:
• Through complex readings, discussion, presentations, and writing, students engage in an in-depth analysis
of the major theorist of justice in the 21stcentury – John Rawls – and his most important critics (see list
above).
• By comparing and contrasting the major paradigms in discussion and writing assignments, students reflect
on the meaning of justice in their political and ethical lives. The final paper requires students to take a
sophisticated stand on the proper meaning of justice in modern society.
• Because seminar students share a commonbackground in political theory, students increase their ability
to call upon texts and concepts that compliment required readings to create a more rigorous seminar
discussion and more nuanced papers.
• By assessing Rawls and his critics, students obtain a vocabulary of political ideology (liberalism,
communitarianism, conservatism, feminism, legalism, utilitarianism, and post-modernism) aswell as an
understanding of different types of justice (e.g. distributive v. restorative).
Required Texts:
Please note the original publication dates of these works. Consider the political, social, and economic events
that each author may be responding to in their work.
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Basic Books, 1974.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice – Revised Edition, HarvardUniversity Press, 1999 (the first edition was
published in 1971 and should be referred to as “the original” version). Please buy the revised edition: ISBN
0674000781.
John Rawls, Law of the Peoples. Harvard University Press, 2001.
Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, Basic Books, 1989.
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Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice Cambridge University Press, 1982.Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.
Selections available on Blackboard as a PDF or on library reserve.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism. Columbia University Press, 1993.
Selections available on Blackboard as a PDF or on library reserve.
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: ADefense of Pluralism and Equality. Basic Books, 1984.
Selections available on Blackboard as a PDF or on library reserve.
Supplementary texts available on library reserve:
Brian Barry, Theories of Justice. University of California Press, 1989.
Samuel Freeman, The Cambridge Companion to Rawls. Cambridge University Press, 2002. Several copies of
this book are available from the University BookStore.
Norman Daniels, Reading Rawls: Critical Studies on Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice.’ Stanford University Press 1989.
Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit, Rawls: A Theory of Justice and its Critics. Stanford University Press, 1990.
Thomas W. Pogge, Realizing Rawls. Cornell University Press, 1989.
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. Anchor Press, 2000.
Robert Paul Wolff, Understanding...