JUSTICE

1. JUSTICE Michael Sandel

2. The Greatest Happiness Principle • Utilitarianism – The greatest happiness for the greatest number of people • Cabin boy • Objection#1 – Individual rights • Is torture ever justified • Objection #2 – A common currency of value (cost-benefit analysis)

3. Do We Own Ourselves? • Libertarianism • The minimal state • Free market philosophy • Taxing Bill Gates to help the poor • Do we own ourselves • Consensual cannibalism

4. Hired Help • Markets and Morals • What’s just – drafting soldiers or hiring them? • Objection #1 – Fairness and freedom • Objection #2 – Civic virtue and the common good • Outsourcing pregnancy • Questions: • How free are the choices we make in a free market? • Are there certain virtues and higher goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

5. What Matters Is the Motive • Immanuel Kant • The Categorical Imperative • Emphasis on human dignity – people as ends in themselves • Autonomous according to a law we give ourselves – Free will (non-deterministic) • What’s moral? Look for the motive – do the right thing for the right reason. • Duty vs. inclination • I.e. Kant was against casual sex.

6. The Case for Equality • John Rawls • The moral limits of contracts • Behind a veil of ignorance • Not utilitarianism • The difference principle – only those social and economic inequalities are permitted that work to the benefit of the least advantaged members of society. • Did Gates’s wealth arise as part of system that, taken as a whole, works to the benefit of the least well off? • Incentives • CEOs and sports starts don’t deserve more money but because a system of progressive taxation helps the disadvantaged

7. Rawls: • Share each other’s fate and avail ourselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit. • The most compelling case for more equal society that American political philosophy as yet produced.

8. Arguing Affirmative Action • Correcting for the testing gap • Compensating for past wrongs • Promoting diversity • Do racial preferences violate rights? • Racial segregation and anti-jewish quotas • Can justice be detached from moral desert? • The proper mission of social institutions is contested and fraught …

9. Who Deservers What? • Aristotle • Justice, Telos and Honor • Justice is teleological – Defining rights requires us to figure out the telos (the purpose, end, or essential nature) of the social practice in question. • Justice is honorific – To reason about the purpose of practice, means to reason (argue) about what virtues it should honor and reward. • What’s the purpose of university, of politics? • Learning by doing – learning by deliberation and discussion • Negotiating between two extremes

10. What Do We Owe Each Other • Dilemmas of Loyalty • Apologies and reparations • Should we atone for the sins of our predecessors? • Moral individualism • Should government by morally neutral? • Justice and freedom • The claims of the community • Obligations of solidarity, loyalty historic memory, and religious faith – moral claims that arise from the communities and traditions that shape our identity. • Storytelling beings • We, as moral agents, arrive at our purposes and ends through telling stories

11. Obligations beyond consent • Natural duties we owe to other human beings – to persons as persons. • Three categories of moral responsibility: • Natural duties: universal, don’t require consent • Voluntary obligations: particular, require consent • Obligations of solidarity: particular, don’t require consent

12. Solidarity and Belonging • Family obligations • French resistance • Rescuing Ethiopian Jews • Is patriotism a virtue? • Border patrols • Is it unfair to “Buy American?” • Can loyalty override universal moral principles? • Robert E. Lee • The Bulger brothers and David Kaczynski

13. Justice and the Common Good • Kennedy speech about religion – moral neutrality • Rawls – Need for tolerance in the face of disagreements and abide by the limits of liberal public reason. • “How would our argument strike us in the form of a Supreme Court opinion?” • Obama rejected moral neutrality • Abortion issue and stem cell debates and same –sex marriage • Morally neutral? • Freedom of choice? • Depends on definitions of purpose • Committed relationship, recognition of the state

14. A politics of the common good • If a just society involves reasoning together about the good life, what kind of discourse would point us in this direction? • The challenge is to imagine a politics that takes moral and spiritual questions seriously, but brings them to bear on broad economic and civic concerns …on all issues. • A just society requires a strong sense of community, and it must cultivate in citizens a concern for the whole, a dedication to the common good.

15. A politics of moral engagement • Based on mutual respect as human beings • Lack of engagement makes for an impoverished public discourse and lessening of mutual respect. • “A politics of moral engagement is not only a more inspiring ideal than a politics of avoidance. It is also a more promising basis for a just society.”