University of Oslo Ethics Program
Ethics Across Borders: Justifying Moral Claims in a Diverse and Unequal World
31 May-4 June, 2010
Instructors:
Dr. Theresa Tobin with Dr. Alison Jaggar.
Contact information:
Theresa.tobin@mu.edu
Alison.Jaggar@colorado.edu
Course description:
This course considers how it might be possible to develop strategies of moral reasoning capable
of being used to address moral disagreements among people who have diverse cultural identities
and are systematically unequal in social power. Students will read and critically assess a variety
of reasoning strategies advocated by prominent contemporary philosophers, including Rawls,
Walzer, Benhabib, Habermas, and O’Neill. Discussions will pay special attention to the ways in
which each strategy works when used in contexts of diversity and inequality. Readings in the
second part of the course will suggest that one flaw shared by several prominent influential
strategies is a propensity to idealization, in one of several distinct senses of this term. We will
consider the possibility of remedying this flaw by drawing on recent work in naturalizing moral
epistemology. We intend to move toward developing an account of moral rationality that is
simultaneously naturalistic and normative.
Course requirements:
The class will meet for two hours each morning (1030-1230) and two hours each afternoon
(1330-1530) during the week of 31 May to 4 June, 2010. Students will usually be expected to
have read two assigned readings prior to each meeting and to be able to discuss them. A 15 page
final paper will be expected, due on June 11.
Texts:
No textbooks will be required for this class. Readings will be made available on line.
Schedule of topics and readings
Monday, May 31
Morning: Introducing the issues
 Some popular news stories: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2061608,00.html;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/17/georgia-headscarf-courtroom-rollins;
http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2009/05/canadas_governor_general_guts.html
 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, selections from chapter 1, 11-27
Afternoon: The view from nowhere.
 Susan M. Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, (Basic Books Publishing), 1991, chapter 5.
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 Alison M. Jaggar, “Taking Consent Seriously: Feminist Practical Ethics and Actual Moral
Dialogue," The Applied Ethics Reader, edited by Earl Winkler and Jerrold Coombs, Oxford:
Blackwell, 1993.
Tuesday, 1 June
Morning: The views from particular places
 Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism chapter 1 and Thick and Thin: Moral
Argument at Home and Abroad chapter 2
 Uma Narayan, “Cross-Cultural Connections, Border-Crossings, and “Death by Culture” from
Dislocating Cultures, pp. 83-117
Afternoon: The view from constitutional democracies
 John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs,
14:3 (Summer 1985), 223-231, 245-251.
 John Rawls, “The Reasonable and the Rational,” from Political Liberalism, Columbia
University Press, 1993, pp. 47-54
 Marilyn Friedman, “John Rawls and the Political Coercion of Unreasonable People,” in The
Idea of a Political Liberalism: Essays on Rawls, edited by Victoria Davion and Clark Wolf,
Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000.
Wednesday, 2 June
Morning: The view from everywhere
 Juergen Habermas “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification,” in
Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, translated by Christina Lenhardt and
Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990, pp 57-68; 86-94.
 Iris M. Young, “Asymmetrical Reciprocity: On Moral Respect, Wonder, and Enlarged
Thought,” from Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy and Policy,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Afternoon: Idealization in moral philosophy
 Onora O’Neill, Toward Justice and Virtue, Oxford UP, 1996, chapter 2.
 Charles Mills, “Ideal Theory as Ideology,” Hypatia vol 20, no 3 (Summer 2005), pp. 165184).
Thursday, 3 June
Morning: Naturalizing Moral Epistemology?
 W.V.O. Quine “Epistemology Naturalized” from Ontological Relativity and Other Essays,
New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1969, pp. 82-90.
 Margaret Urban Walker, “Seeing Power in Morality: A Proposal for Feminist Naturalism in
Ethics,” in Feminists Doing Ethics, edited by Peggy DesAutels and Joanne Waugh, Totowa,
NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001, pp. 3-14.
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Afternoon: Naturalizing Moral Methodology I
 Alison M. Jaggar, “Toward a Feminist Conception of Moral Reasoning,” in Morality and
Social Justice: Point Counterpoint, with James P. Sterba, Milton Fisk, William A. Galston,
Carol C. Gould, Tibor Machan and Robert Solomon, Lanham, MD and London, UK: Rowman
and Littlefield, 1995.
 Theresa W. Tobin, “On Their Own Ground: Strategies of Resistance for Sunni Muslim
Women” Hypatia, vol 22, no 3, (Summer 2007), pp. 152-174.
Friday, June 4
Morning: Naturalizing Moral Methodology II
 Alison. M. Jaggar, “Globalizing Feminist Ethics,” Hypatia, 13:2 (Spring, 1998) pp. 7-31.
 Brook Ackerly, Political Theory and Third World Social Criticism, Cambridge UP, 2000,
pp1-23 and chapter 2.
Afternoon: Developing new strategies for moral reasoning
Open
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