Topics in Political Theory: The Just Society
POSC 32003
Spring 2013
Basic Information
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Instructor: Dr. Sam Arnold
Email: s.arnold@tcu.edu
Office: 2007G Scharbauer Hall
Office Hours: T 2:30-3:30, Th 2:30-3:30, and by appointment
Class time:
o Section 050: M, W, F 1:00 – 1:50
o Section 060: M, W, F 2:00 – 2:50
Class location: Scharbauer 1007
Course description
Justice is the master virtue of political and social institutions. Above all else, we want to
live in a just society. But this goal is a little murky. What would a just society look like?
In this course we try to answer this question by investigating four ways of thinking about
justice: utilitarianism, libertarianism, liberal egalitarianism, and socialism/communism.
We will read authors such as JS Mill, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, Karl Marx, Friedrich
Hayek, and Edward Bellamy. Readings will be temporally diverse (i.e., we’ll read
golden oldies as well as contemporary pieces) and ideologically balanced (i.e., we’ll read
stuff from the right as well as the left). Leave your dogmas at home: in this class we are
going to follow Marx’s advice to engage in a “ruthless criticism of everything existing”!
Learning Goals
First, the bad news. Many students find political theory difficult. The texts are
demanding and require careful, active study. You can’t skim political theory! (Or, you
can, but you won’t get anything out of it.) Instead, you’ve got to attack the readings: read
them, write notes on them, underline key passages, think about them, read key passages
again, write more notes, and so on, until you not only a) understand the author’s
argument but, crucially, b) are able to critically evaluate the author’s argument. Your
goal, in short, is not merely to understand what (say) Marx said about (say) capitalism—
although that is important—but to develop an intelligent evaluation of Marx’s argument
about capitalism. Does Marx’s argument work, or not? And if not, why not? Where
does he go wrong?
Now, the good news. If you work hard in this class, you will develop a host of invaluable
intellectual tools that will serve you well not only in your other classes here at TCU but—
more importantly—in your life beyond college. This class will help you…
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Read and understand complicated texts (in any field, not just political theory)
Understand and evaluate complex arguments
Master the major theories of justice
Think critically about a range of pressing political issues (like economic freedom,
taxation, income equality, the proper role and scope of government, etc.)
Write with clarity, precision, rigor, and grace
Discuss controversial political topics respectfully and deeply
Put simply, if you put in the requisite effort, this course can help you become a better
student, a better critical thinker and writer, and even a better citizen. And if you slack off
or coast through the class? Well, I predict that you get out what you put in.
Required Texts
There are several required texts for this class. All of them can be purchased at the TCU
Bookstore at Barnes & Noble (2950 West Berry St.).
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Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. George Sher
John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
Additional readings will be available digitally on our eCollege site.
Overview of Assignments
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Three 3-5 page “critical summaries”
Two 6-8 page “evaluative essays”
One take-home exam on Marx
Occasional unannounced reading quizzes
Due Dates for Assignments
Sunday, Feb. 3:
Sunday, Feb 24:
Sunday, March 17:
Sunday, April 7:
Sunday, April 14:
Monday, May 6:
Critical Summary #1
Critical Summary #2
Critical Summary #3
Evaluative Essay #1
Take-home exam on Marx
Evaluative Essay #2
Grading Policy
I will determine your course grade as follows:
1)
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Critical Summaries: 30% (10% each)
Evaluative Essays: 40% (20% each)
Take-home exam on Marx: 10%
Pop reading quizzes: 10% (number of quizzes TBD)
Class Participation (attendance + “good classroom citizenship”): 10%
I’m not convinced that grades are a good idea. They threaten to misdirect your attention
away from what’s important (namely, intellectual growth) and towards what’s not
(getting a figurative ‘gold star’ from the professor). However, grade I must. I’ll try to do
it fairly and in a way that helps you learn.
I’ll say more about grading standards prior to the first assignment.
A word on participation
People learn political theory best by doing it: that is, by discussing and criticizing
arguments and ideas with other people. Accordingly, I will give you ample opportunity
to participate in class. Ideally our class will resemble a seminar more than a lecture.
However, this strategy will only work if you arrive to class willing and able to discuss the
readings in an informed, critical way! So please do prepare conscientiously for class.
My best guess is that you’ll need to spend 1-3 hours preparing for each class session—
perhaps a little more when the reading is especially difficult, perhaps a little less when the
reading is easier.
I recognize that some students are reluctant to speak in class. I understand their
reluctance, but I encourage them to work through it. Learning to present ideas and raise
questions in a group setting is a crucial part of your intellectual development. However,
if you find yourself unable to speak regularly in class, come see me during office hours
and we can discuss other ways in which you might participate.
Course Policies
My course policies rest on three principles. Course policies should a) create an effective
learning environment; b) treat all students fairly; and c) treat students as adults: that is, as
people who are worthy of respect and accountable for their actions. The following
policies reflect these three principles.
Attendance: You are required to attend class. Absences will negatively affect your
participation grade. If you have to miss class for a legitimate reason, let me know as far
in advance as possible.
Late work: You are required to hand assignments in on time. Late assignments will be
penalized 1/3 of a letter grade per day. (So an A paper that is one day late will drop
from an A to an A-.) This penalty will be waived if and only if you have a legitimate
excuse. It is not possible to define the category of “legitimate excuse” exhaustively, but
examples will give you the general idea.
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Legitimate excuses include: severe illness; family or personal crisis (death in the
family, etc.).
o Do you need documentation? I am not going to treat you like a child. It
is mildly insulting to ask you to hand me a note proving you were at a
funeral, suffered a personal crisis, etc. So no notes required. In return,
please do not abuse this policy by “crying wolf”, i.e., falsely claiming an
emergency.
 Here are a few excuses that won’t cut the mustard: “I had a lot of
work this weekend.” (Everyone has lots of work!) “My
fraternity/sorority/church group/anarchist cell threw a party and I
couldn’t work on the paper.” “I was so busy with sports/the student
newspaper/my intramural team/my job that I couldn’t fit in the
assignment.” (Everyone has competing demands on their time!)
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Laptops/phones/etc.: My policy here is simple. Use laptops for note-taking and
for accessing any course materials that may be online. Do not use them for
anything else. That means, for example, no internet surfing, no Facebook, no
email, etc. etc. The same goes, of course, for phones and other devices.
Information for Students with Disabilities
Texas Christian University complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 regarding students with disabilities.
Eligible students seeking accommodations should contact the Coordinator of Services for
Students with Disabilities in the Center for Academic Services located in Sadler Hall, 11.
Accommodations are not retroactive, therefore, students should contact the Coordinator
as soon as possible in the term for which they are seeking accommodations. Further
information can be obtained from the Center for Academic Services, TCU Box 297710,
Fort Worth, TX 76129, or at (817) 257-7486.
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Adequate time must be allowed to arrange accommodations and
accommodations are not retroactive; therefore, students should contact the
Coordinator as soon as possible in the academic term for which they are
seeking accommodations. Each eligible student is responsible for presenting
relevant, verifiable, professional documentation and/or assessment reports to
the Coordinator. Guidelines for documentation may be found at
http://www.acs.tcu.edu/DISABILITY.HTM.
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Students with emergency medical information or needing special
arrangements in case a building must be evacuated should discuss this
information with their instructor/professor as soon as possible.
Academic Misconduct
(From section 3.4 from the Student Handbook) Any act that violates the academic
integrity of the institution is considered academic misconduct. The procedures used to
resolve suspected acts of academic misconduct are available in the offices of Academic
Deans and the Office of Campus Life and are listed in detail in the Undergraduate
Catalog (available online @ http://catalog.tcu.edu/undergraduate/).
Specific examples of academic misconduct include, but are not limited to:
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Cheating: Copying from another student’s test paper, laboratory report, other
report, or computer files and listings; using, during any academic exercise,
material and/or devices not authorized by the person in charge of the test;
collaborating with or seeking aid from another student during a test or laboratory
without permission; knowingly using, buying, selling, stealing, transporting, or
soliciting in its entirety or in part, the contents of a test or other assignment
unauthorized for release; substituting for another student or permitting another
student to substitute for oneself.
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Plagiarism: The appropriation, theft, purchase or obtaining by any means
another’s work, and the unacknowledged submission or incorporation of that
work as one’s own offered for credit. Appropriation includes the quoting or
paraphrasing of another’s work without giving credit.
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Collusion: The unauthorized collaboration with another in preparing work offered
for credit.
Simply put, don’t cheat. Cheating robs you of the opportunity to learn and betrays a lack
of character and self-respect. Do you want to be the sort of person who cheats his way
through life? Plus, from a purely self-interested point of view, cheating is a bad bet. I
will probably catch you and the consequences are grim. Trust me: it’s much better to
write an awful paper and get a disappointing (but passing) grade than it is to cheat and get
a zero for the assignment, plus whatever other consequences follow from violating the
school’s honor code.
Schedule of Topics and Readings1
Note: After each reading you will notice either an “[E]” or a “[B]”. “[E]” means that the
reading is available on our eCollege site. “[B]” means that the reading is contained in a
book that you must purchase from the bookstore.
Introduction: What is Political Philosophy?
M, January 14
W, January 16
F, January 18
No reading
1) Peter Singer, excerpt from The Life You Can Save (19 pages)
[E]
2) OPTIONAL: John Shand, Arguing Well, Chapters 2 and 3
(“Arguments” and “How Arguments Fail”) [E]
Michael Sandel, “Doing the Right Thing,” from Justice: What’s
the Right Thing to Do? (26 pages) [E]
Unit 1: Utilitarianism
M, January 21
W, January 23
No Class – MLK Holiday
1) Ursula LeGuin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (7
pages) [E]
F, January 25
M, January 28
W, January 30
2) Jeremy Bentham, excerpt from Principles of Morals and
Legislation (5 pages) [E]
JS Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapters 1 and 2 [B]
JS Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapter 5 [B]
Bernard Williams, excerpt from Utilitarianism: For and Against,
pages TBA [E]
Williams, pages TBA [E]
F, February 1
Critical Summary #1 due Sunday, February 3
Unit 2: Libertarianism
M, February 4
W, February 6
F, February 8
M, February 11
W, February 13
1
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia [ASU], Preface and
Chapter 1 [B]
Nozick, ASU, pp. 10-35, 51-53 [B]
Nozick, ASU, pp. 54-87 [B]
Nozick, ASU, pp. 88-119 [B]
Eric Mack, “Nozickian Arguments for the More-than-Minimal
Schedule of readings may change at my discretion.
F, February 15
M, February 18
W, February 20
F, February 22
State,” in Cambridge Companion to Nozick, eds. Ralf Bader and
John Meadowcroft, pp. 89-115
Nozick, ASU, 149-164
Nozick, ASU, 167-182 [B]
Michael Otsuka, “Self-Ownership and Equality,” pp. 11-40 in
Libertarianism Without Inequality [E]
Thomas Nagel, “Libertarianism Without Foundations,” The Yale
Law Journal, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Nov., 1975), pp. 136-149
Critical Summary #2 due Sunday, Feb 24
Unit 3: Liberal Egalitarianism—Rawls and “Property-Owning Democracy”
F, March 1
M, March 4
Thomas Nagel, “Rawls and Liberalism,” from The Cambridge
Companion to Rawls [E]
Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement [henceforth, JAF],
sections 2-8, 12, 13 [B]
Rawls, JAF, sections 14, 17, 18, 19 [B]
1) Rawls, JAF, 41, 42, 49 [B]
W, March 6
2) Thad Williamson, “Who Owns What? An Egalitarian
Interpretation of Rawls’s Idea of a Property-Owning
Democracy,” Journal of Social Philosophy 40, 3, Fall 2009, 434453 [E]
1) Rawls, JAF, sections 39, 52 [B]
M, February 25
W, February 27
F, March 8
2) Martin O’Neill, “Liberty, Equality and Property-Owning
Democracy,” Journal of Social Philosophy 40, 3, Fall 2009, 379396. [E]
3 blog posts (from bleedingheartlibertarians.com) critical of
Rawls’s “property-owning democracy” by Kevin Vallier:
 Why Property-Owning Democracy? [E]
 Property-Owning Democracy is Unworkable [E]
 Property-Owning Democracy is Unjust [E]
March 11-15: Spring Break!
Critical Summary #3 due Sunday, March 17
Unit 4: Reconciliation between right and left? Tomasi’s “Free Market Fairness”
M, March 18
W, March 20
John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness, Introduction; 22-26; 27-56
[B]
Tomasi, FMF, 87-99; 106-119 (up to “consider this the
challenge from the right”) [B]
F, March 22
M, March 25
W, March 27
F, March 29
M, April 1
Tomasi, FMF, 227-254; 264-266 [B]
Writing discussion: evaluative essays. Read two sample student
papers and complete the questionnaire
Sampling from bleedingheartlibertarians.com symposium on
FMF—precise assignment TBD [E]
No class
1) Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson, “Free Market Fairness:
Is There a Moral Case for Free Markets?” Boston Review
November/December 2012 [E]
2) Kevin Vallier, bleedingheartlibertarians.com post replying to
O’Neill and Williamson (TBD) [E]
Evaluative Essay #1 due Sunday, April 7
Unit 5: Capitalism, Communism
W, April 3
F, April 5
M, April 8
W, April 10
F, April 12
M, April 15
W, April 17
F, April 19
M, April 22
W, April 24
F, April 26
M, April 29
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Parts I and II [E]
Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (pages TBA) [E]
Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (pages TBA) [E]
Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (pages TBA) [E]
No class—take home quiz on Capital due Sunday night
1) Marx and Engels, selections on communism (TBA) [E]
2) Alex Callinicos, The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx, pp.
207-217 [E]
Erik Olin Wright, “Thinking About Alternatives to Capitalism,”
from Envisioning Real Utopias, pp. 89-109 [B]
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, condensed edition, pp.
31-62 [E]
Wright, “What’s So Bad About Capitalism?” from ERU, pp. 3365 [B]
Wright, “What’s So Bad…” pp. 65-89 [B]
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, pages TBA [B]
Bellamy, Looking Backward, pages TBA [B]
Unit 6: Summary/Reflection
W, May 1
No reading
Evaluative Essay # 2 due Monday, May 6th