PLEASE NOTE this is a 2013 reading list—the precise content may change in future years.
Term 2, Week 1
What is justice? What makes a distribution of resources just?
Core reading
A. Swift, Political Philosophy: A Beginners’ Guide for Students and Politicians (3rd edition, 2013)
(Cambridge: Polity): part 1 on Social Justice
J. Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press): chapter 5 on The
Distribution of Property
Additional reading
B. Barry, Why Social Justice Matters (Cambridge: Polity 2005)
M. Clayton and A. Williams (eds.), Social Justice (Oxford: Blackwell 2004): chapters 3 (Rawls on
justice as fairness), 4 (Nozick on entitlement), 8 (Miller on desert), and 9 (Okin on gender)
H. Brighouse, Justice (Cambridge: Polity 2004)
T. Campbell, Justice (Basingstoke: Palgrave (3rd ed., 2010)
Seminar questions
1. Does social justice require coercive redistributive taxation?
2. Is it naïve to think that we could ever have a just society? If so, why?