Contemporary Issues in Justice
Name：
Cillian McBride
Nationality：
United Kingdom
Academic Title：Associate Professor
Queen’s
Home University
University ,Belfast,
（From）：
Northern Ireland, UK
Email Address： f.schuppert@qub.ac.uk
Undergraduate Master Doctoral student
English
none
A mixture of lectures and class discussion. There will also be a voluntary reading
group on Contemporary Theories of Justice (on Fridays).
1) 40% for presence and participation
2) 60% for final essay
2 credits
CillianMcBride, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory. Research interests:
Contemporary political theory, particularly the ethics and politics of recognition,
republicanism (non-domination), and deliberative democracy/political liberalism.
My research centres on tensions between demands for respect and esteem, and the
relations between norms of social recognition and the pursuit of social and political
equality.
This course offers participants a comprehensive overview of 20th century and
contemporary theories of justice. The course offers an introduction to, and in-depth
discussion of, the major contributions to the debate. In so doing, the course allows
students to get a systematic understanding of the different dimensions of and
contemporary issues in justice. Based on the assigned readings of core texts,
lectures and in-class discussions the participants will acquire an excellent
understanding of the main normative theories and their respective strengths and
weaknesses. In addition, the course offers a complementary reading group segment,
in which we will discuss in further detail some key-texts on contemporary issues
of justice. Overall, the aim of the course is to equip students with up-to-date
in-depth knowledge of contemporary theories of justice and to encourage critical
debate on related issues.
The course is designed to deal with justice as a phenomenon across time and space.
Thus, the course offers special lectures on retributive justice, rectificatory
justice and intergenerational justice, as well as lectures on global justice, and
justice and the environment. Moreover, the course features a series of sessions on
core-issues in the debate on social and distributive justice, such as justice and
responsibility, the relationship between justice and democracy, as well as justice
and recognition theory. On top of that, the course will be complemented by three
lectures on classical approaches to justice, each one connected to a particular
commitment in moral theory, namely, libertarianism, consequentialism and
contractualism.
Week 1. Introduction; Course Outline
导论，课程大纲
Moral Theories and Justice I: Consequentialism, Utilitarianism
道德理论和正义 I：后果主义和功利主义
Moral Theories and Justice II: Contractualism
道德理论和正义 II：契约主义
Moral Theories and Justice III: Libertarianism, Natural Rights Theories
道德理论和正义 III：自由至上主义，自然权利理论
Week 2. Egalitarianism, Prioritarianism and Sufficientarianism
平等主义，优先主义和充分论主义
Justice and Responsibility: Luck-Egalitarianism and Beyond
Justice and Culture
正义与责任：运气平等主义，超越正义和文化
Justice and Recognition Theory
正义与认同理论
Week 3. The Currency of Justice
正义的潮流
The Site and Range of Justice
正义的位置与范围
Justice and Democracy: equality and freedom
正义与民主：平等与自由
Global Justice
国际正义
Week 4. Rectificatory Justice: Key Ideas & Historic Wrongs
矫正正义：主要观点和历史过错
Retributive Justice: Punishment, Mercy and Forgiveness
分配正义：惩罚、怜悯与宽恕
Intergenerational Justice
代际正义
Concluding Student Debate; Summary
总结学生讨论。尾声
We will provide a digital e-reader containing all the relevant texts in pdf format
ahead of the course.
• Ackerman, Bruce A., 1980, Social Justice and the Liberal State, New Haven: Yale
University Press.
• Alstott, Anne and Bruce A. Ackerman, 1999, The Stakeholder Society, New Haven:
Yale University Press.
• Arneson, Richard, 1990, “Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal
Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 19: 158–194
• Arthur, John and William Shaw (eds.), 1991, Justice and Economic Distribution 2nd
Ed., Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Barry, Brian, 1965, Political Argument, London: Routledge and Keagan Paul.
• Barry, Brian, 1989, Theories of Justice (Volume 1), Berkeley: University of
California Press.
• Barry, Brian, 1988, “Equal opportunity and moral arbitrariness,” in Equal
Opportunity, Norman E. Bowie (ed.), Boulder and London: Westview Press, 23–44.
• Cohen, G.A., 1997, “Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice,”
in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 26: 3–30.
• Cohen, G. A., 1995, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, New York: Cambridge
University Press.
• Cohen, G.A., 2000, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're so Rich?, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
• Daniels, Norman (ed.), 1975, Reading Rawls: Critical Studies of A Theory of Justice,
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Dworkin, Ronald, 1981, “What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Resources,”
Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10: 185–246.
• Dworkin, Ronald, 1981, “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Welfare,”
Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10: 283–345.
• Dworkin, Ronald, 2000, Sovereign Virtue, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Feinberg, Joel, 1970, “Justice and Personal Desert,” Doing and Deserving,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 55–94.
• Gauthier, David, 1987, Morals by Agreement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Goodin, Robert E., 1995, Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy, New York:
Cambridge University Press.
• Kymlicka, Will, 1990, Contemporary Political Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Miller, David, 1999, Principles of Social Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
• Okin, Susan Moller, 1991, Justice, Gender and the Family, New York: Basic Books.
• Parfit, Derek, 1986, Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Rawls, John, 1971, A Theory of Justice, Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 1993, Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press.
• –––, 1999, Collected Papers, Sam Freeman, (ed.), Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
• –––, 2001, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
• Roemer, John E., 1996, Theories of Distributive Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
• Scheffler, Samuel, 2001, Boundaries and Allegiances, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
• Schmidtz, D. 2006, Elements of Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sen, Amartya, 1982, “Equality of What?,” in A. Sen, Choice, Welfare and
Measurement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Steiner, H., 1981, Liberty and Equality, Political Studies, 29: 555–569.
• Vallentyne, Peter, 1997, “Self-Ownership and Equality: Brute Luck, Gifts,
Universal Dominance, and Leximin,” Ethics, 107: 321–343.
• Walzer Michael, 1984, Spheres of Justice, New York: Basic Books.