Course Introduction
This course introduces the basic concepts and methods of moral and political philosophy. We focus on the development of moral reasoning and how to apply these ideas to contemporary social and political issues. Although the course is organized around the concept of justice, we will discuss a wide range of philosophical topics and perspectives.-
Time: 49 hours
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Free Certificate
We explore the value of human life, the moral standing of the free market, the notion of fundamental human rights, equality of opportunity, and the conditions for a moral community. We make extensive use of Michael Sandel's lecture series on justice, which was delivered at Harvard University in 2009.
In addition to these lectures, we study several moral and political philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Rawls. We also examine the contemporary thinkers Alasdair MacIntyre, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, news articles, and primary source texts on important legal decisions. By the end of the course, you will have a better understanding of the philosophical issues involved in many contemporary debates in the public sphere, and a refined sense of your own moral and political positions and intuitions.
First, read the course syllabus. Then, enroll in the course by clicking "Enroll me in this course". Click Unit 1 to read its introduction and learning outcomes. You will then see the learning materials and instructions on how to use them.
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Unit 1: Murder, Morality, and the Value of Human Life
Everyone has some ideas about the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. We use these beliefs to guide our behavior, judge the behavior of others, and decide on laws and punishments in our society. Sometimes situations arise that force us to call our moral beliefs into question and debate the truth about moral behavior with our peers. It is usually the difficult cases, where people are divided about the right course of action, that bring the differences in our moral intuitions into focus and force us to clarify our moral principles.
In this unit, we investigate some notoriously difficult and divisive moral dilemmas involving justice, rights, and the value of human life. We explore the moral theory of utilitarianism in depth and consider whether it can help us determine the right thing to do and how to produce a just society. Finally, we introduce two ethical theories that contrast with utilitarianism: deontology and natural law.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 6 hours.
Unit 2: Rights, the State, and the Free Market
So far, we have predominantly considered theories of just action that base their criteria for justice on an action's consequences. Utilitarianism, as we have seen, provides a convincing justification for many of our moral intuitions, but even its more refined versions, such as the theory advanced by John Stuart Mill, start to seem unsatisfying once we realize that they reduce moral decisions to detached, rational calculations. If we want a completely adequate theory of just action, we may need to consider an alternative approach to justice and morality. Consequently, this course will continue to examine some other approaches to ethical questions which are not grounded in the consequences of an action. One such approach is represented by libertarianism, which argues that morality and justice are rooted in the natural rights of individual human beings. Consequences matter, of course, but they are always secondary to considerations of natural rights.
Libertarianism centers on the relationship between individual freedom and the laws of the state. In this unit, we will look at arguments on both sides of this question. Plato, in the dialogue known as the Crito, gives arguments that claim the individual does not have a right to defy his or her government. In contrast, contemporary proponents of libertarianism like Milton Friedman and Robert Nozick uphold individual rights and liberties. John Locke argues that the contract we have with our government can always be rescinded. Locke’s arguments have been influential in the shaping of modern western democracies, in general, and the United States in particular.Completing this unit should take you approximately 15 hours.
Unit 3: Morality, Markets, and Immanuel Kant
John Locke and the libertarian philosophers he inspired held that justice and morality are a matter of respecting the fundamental rights that all individuals hold in common – life, liberty, and property (including the property of one's self). Libertarians such as Milton Friedman argue these principles are incompatible with the government placing restrictions on the free market. But what happens when the market itself brings our rights into conflict with one another? In this unit, we examine several case studies in which individual rights are disputed, and we consider whether these cases provide sufficient reason to doubt the libertarian position.
Are individual rights enough to determine how to answer moral questions and how to propose a just society? Perhaps we need a more substantive philosophical approach to answer some of our moral and political questions. This is the position of Immanuel Kant, who suggests that we have certain moral obligations because we are human beings with moral reasoning capabilities. These capabilities lead to certain duties which we need to consider. We call Kant’s philosophy deontological, which means it is rooted in duty.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 10 hours.
Unit 4: John Rawls' Theory of Justice
In the 1970s, John Rawls (1921–2002), the American moral and political philosopher, proposed what many consider to be the most important contemporary theory of justice. He updates the traditional social contract approach, but begins with the deceptively simple idea of fairness, rather than the natural rights of individuals. Who can disagree with the proposal that a just society should be fair?
Rawls' theory is convincing and controversial. Thomas Hobbes, one of the most well-known proponents of social contract theory, believed that life before government and the social contract is "nasty, brutish and short" because human nature itself is selfish and cruel, especially when society lacks a government contract to maintain peace and punish those who break the contract.
Rawls has a more positive view of human nature: he advocates political liberalism, and his political philosophy conflicts with several popular contemporary ideas and ideologies. He examines issues of equality in society and proposes redistributing certain social goods – such as income, education, and opportunity – to ensure fairness.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 10 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- explain Hobbes' description of the state of nature and its implications for human nature;
- compare and contrast Hobbes' and Locke’s description of the state of nature and Rawls' original position and veil of ignorance concepts;
- describe the concepts of fairness and justice as understood in social and political theory;
- differentiate among distributive, retributive, and restorative justice; and
- apply the concepts of justice to case examples, such as affirmative action and racial profiling.
4.1: Social Contract Theory in Historical Focus: Thomas Hobbes
Read Chapters 13, 14, and 15 from Hobbes' Leviathan. Hobbes describes what people are like in the absence of government authority. While life before a social contract is inherently negative, people will tend to seek social contracts and peace. Hobbes argues that these laws of nature will ultimately mitigate our destructive tendencies.
Watch this lecture, which provides background on Hobbes' view of the state of nature and human nature before the social contract.
Read Chapters 17 and 18 from Hobbes' Leviathan. Hobbes describes the civil society and commonwealth that results when people form a social contract with their government. Individuals give up some of their rights to the sovereign, or to the great leviathan that is composed of citizens.
Watch this lecture, which gives additional information about the transition from life in Hobbes' state of nature to life in the social contract.
Read this article, which contrasts Hobbes' views with those of Locke. What is the difference between Locke's view of the state of nature and Hobbes' view? What is the difference between Locke's and Hobbes' conception of the social contract?
4.2: Social Contract Theory without the Contract: John Rawls
John Rawls is famous for devising a contemporary version of social contract theory that does not rely on the existence of any actual social contract or historical state of nature. He is similar to Kant in that he thinks we can derive a theory of justice from reason itself by imagining we need to define the principles of a fair society without knowing what position we will occupy in that society. Rawls' thought experiment is known as the veil of ignorance.
Watch this lecture from 22:30 to the end. In this lecture, Sandel discusses the concept of social contracts, social compacts, and mutual agreements in civil society. He compares these to the kinds of agreements that are the hallmark of justice for Rawls and the foundation of civil society for Locke and Hobbes. Just laws, or laws that are in accordance with justice, come from these kinds of agreements. For Kant, contracts that generate justice are "ideas of reason." This allows Kant to provide an objective basis for contracts and laws, which is a way to describe laws as over and above subjective preferences.
The following remarks were delivered by Bill Soderberg at the Peace and Justice Studies Association Annual Conference on October 16, 2015. Professor Soderberg describes John Rawls' overall approach to justice and his views on just war in particular. There are two principles to notice from Rawls' Theory of Justice: the veil of ignorance and the difference principle. What do each of these mean? What does ius ad bellum mean? What is ius in bello? Notice Rawls' eight principles on whether to go to war and his six principles on conduct within war. List three of each and comment on whether or not you think these principles concerning war are right.
Read pages 1-7 of these excerpts from John Rawls' 1971 text. Stop when you reach the subheading on page 7, "Two Principles of Justice." Rawls aims to provide a theory of justice that is even more general than that of Locke or Kant, since it is based on purely hypothetical original position. How would we choose to organize society, if we had no idea what position we would have in it? Rawls' idea is that we should try to make it as fair as possible so that no matter what position we ended up in, we would have the same resources and chances as everyone else.
Watch this lecture until 24:35. As you watch, consider what a genuinely fair society would look like. One plausible answer is that it would be a society in which everyone had an equal opportunity to succeed. Societies in which success is a function of each individual's abilities, or meritocracies, gives an unfair advantage to those who are born into positions of privilege or greater natural ability. According to Rawls, the technique of reasoning from the original position demonstrates that social benefits will always need to be redistributed in order to benefit the least well-off.
Read pages 7-14 of these excerpts, beginning with the subheading on page 7, "Two Principles of Justice." In these selections, Rawls presents his two principles of justice. Firstly, everyone should have an equal right to basic freedoms. Secondly, resources and institutions should be arranged to benefit the least well-off to create equality of opportunity. These principles are a far cry from the minimal government intervention libertarians advocate.
4.3: The Question of Distributive Justice
Watch the rest of this lecture, from 24:36 to the end. Contingencies will always exist that make the social playing field uneven. As you watch, ask yourself: should we as a society allow these inequalities to continue, or should we try to correct for them? This lecture deals with a highly divisive issue, namely whether the wealth of the most successful members of society should be redistributed through taxation to benefit the most disadvantaged. Sandel examines the libertarian, meritocratic, and egalitarian approaches to this question, and he asks students to decide which one they think is the most just.
Read this article, which describes key differences between retributive and restorative justice. In social and political philosophy, there are traditionally two major types of justice: distributive justice describes how status, wealth, and goods in society are portioned out and retributive justice describes punishments, penalties, and restitution for situations where someone wrongs someone else and breaks a social contract.
In recent years, retributive justice theory has been contrasted with restorative justice: retributive justice focuses on punishment and penalty, while restorative justice focuses on restitution and restoring community relationships.
Read this article which describes restorative justice. What are the benefits of this approach over retributive justice? What are some of the pitfalls or risks?
The income gap that exists in the United States between the highest and lowest earners has increased. Read this article which was written in March 2016 and respond to the following questions: To which era of modern American history is the current level of income inequality frequently compared? What events tend to precipitate the widening of income inequality? What percentage of wealth in the United States do the top 20 percent earners own? The bottom 20 percent earners?
Watch this lecture until 25:50. In this lecture, Sandel tackles the controversial policy of affirmative action as a form of distributive justice. The question is, does affirmative action create a more just society by helping a disadvantaged group compete on a more level playing field, or is it, as its opponents claim, a form of reverse racism, because it singles out one group for special treatment?
Read the following segments from the United States Court of Appeals' decision in the case of Hopwood v. Texas: sections I, II, and III (A.) on pages 1–34. Then, skip ahead and read part VI on pages 67–70. This U.S. Court of Appeals decision involved a group of white students who sued the University of Texas School of Law on the grounds that the school selected several minority students instead of them despite the fact that they had superior academic qualifications. The plaintiffs argued that the law school discriminated against them based on their race. The court decided in their favor, although the decision was later overturned. The court's statement provides a reasoned argument for the idea that affirmative action constitutes racial discrimination.
Read the syllabus of Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decision handed down in Hopwood. What did Grutter argue in the case? Did the Court uphold her argument or reject it? Who must analyze government racial qualifications? Is student body diversity a compelling state interest? What is a narrowly tailored plan?
The following article is excerpted from Race, Reputation, and the Supreme Court: Valuing Blackness and Whiteness by Fran Lisa Buntman. What is the impact of blackness and whiteness on reputation and in the legal system?
Read Professor Chappell's remarks on the ethical difficulties with racial profiling. What is the difference in considering an individual versus a group?
Unit 5: Ethics and Politics of Virtue
Prior to any of the theories we have considered so far, most accounts of what it means for a person to be moral, or for a society to be just, centered on some conception of virtue. Aristotle is the most famous proponent of virtue, as the basis for living a good human life and creating a good state. Recently, Alasdair MacIntyre and a growing number of moral and political theorists have returned to the concept of virtue as an antidote to what they interpret as an over-emphasis on individual rights and freedoms, and a neglect of community and tradition in political thought since the Enlightenment. But can our society agree on what living virtuously means?
In this unit, we examine Aristotle's theory of a society organized on the basis of virtue, and some modern communitarian extensions of his general line of thought. We contrast Aristotle's notion of virtue with existentialist concepts of will to power (as in Friedrich Nietszche), and radical freedom and radical responsibility (as in Jean Paul Sartre). We see how these theories bear on certain controversial topics of our day. This discussion will help you consider these types of difficult controversies from a richer, more informed perspective.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 10 hours.
Study Guides
These study guides will help you get ready for the final exam. They discuss the key topics in each unit, walk through the learning outcomes, and list important vocabulary terms. They are not meant to replace the course materials!
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Certificate Final Exam
Take this exam if you want to earn a free Course Completion Certificate.
To receive a free Course Completion Certificate, you will need to earn a grade of 70% or higher on this final exam. Your grade for the exam will be calculated as soon as you complete it. If you do not pass the exam on your first try, you can take it again as many times as you want, with a 7-day waiting period between each attempt.
Once you pass this final exam, you will be awarded a free Course Completion Certificate.