Welcome to Philosophy and Public Affairs: Economic Justice. I hope you'll find the subject matter of this course as interesting as I do.
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Welcome to Philosophy and Public Affairs: Economic Justice. I hope you'll find the subject matter of this course as interesting as I do.
Although many people think of philosophy as totally abstracted from everyday life, philosophy actually grows out of our everyday lives. You can start with any area of life that interests you and, by persistently asking questions and examining the answers and the evidence given for the answers, quickly find yourself "philosophizing." Begin thinking about issues surrounding the downloading of music from the internet and soon you're asking about "intellectual property rights." But those questions in turn lead to questions about property rights in general, about the relation between legal rights and "moral" or "human" rights, and, soon, about the ultimate basis of right and wrong, of good and bad. And this is how you end up philosophizing.
The course catalogue description for this course states:
A philosophical examination of principles and values underlying contemporary social issues. The course will focus on specific issues such as abortion, privacy, censorship, world hunger, economic justice, business ethics, violence, war, peace, and utopian ideals. Topics to be announced in the Schedule of Classes. May be repeated for credit when topics vary.
Health care, intellectual property rights (e.g., copyrighted music available for download....), education, torts: these issues all involve economic justice: In each case there are scarce goods and services that must be allocated. To think well about these issues requires not only economic knowledge but philosophical reflection. This course will attempt to combine the two, thus providing the student with some of the necessary tools for the "examined life."
So how will we do this?
We start out with an introduction to the nature of philosophical thinking--by looking at Socrates and his famous defense at his trial (as presented in Plato's dialogus, the Apology). "The unexamined life is not worth living." We then look at the Crito, another dialogue of Plato, which recounts Socrates' last day. Here Socrates engages in careful thinking about whether he ought to escape when he has a chance or stay and accept his punishment. This discussion raises questions of the nature of political obligation and, along with the Apology, of civil disobedience. We further explore these topics by reading Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and an essay by Gregory Vlastos on "Socrates on Civil Obedience and Disobedience."
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We will be concerned with economic justice in the context of the "mixed market-capitalist" economy such as we find in the USA and most West European countries. So we want some sense of how such an economy works and, in particular, how the health-care markets work or don't work. This will give us the context we need to think about economic justice broadly and then about economic justice in healthcare provision more specifically.
Overview of Economic Justice
Views (ideologies, philosophies) about economic just range from those that see whatever the markets generate as being economically just to those that believe that it is impossible to achieve justice in a market-capitalist economy. We will attempt to identify and evaluate the major philosophical positions and arguments relating to the issue.
Finally, Justice in Healthcare Provision
The last part of the course will involve careful reading and evaluation of a number of key articles from the anthology Medicine and Social Justice.
What Do You Have to Do?
The course requirements are spelled out on the course syllabus pages. Briefly, there will be some tests on the material in the early part of the course, some journalling on various course-related topics, a student presentation to the class on an article in the Medicine and Social Justice text or some other approved source, and a final examination.
So that's the course, in a nutshell. I hope you enjoy it. This is one of the most important topics facing American society today, and one that significantly involves philosophical issues as well as difficult questions of fact and of cause and effect.
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