Justice in Comparative Context

Catalog description

This course will compare conceptions of justice across a wide range of traditions in time and space. We will begin in ancient Greece with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, whose thought left an indelible mark on early Christian thinkers like St. Augustine and Aquinas. Indeed, modern philosophy has been famously characterized as a series of footnotes to Plato. But we shall see that this is a rather narrow reading of political philosophy, as there are myriad other ways of thinking about justice that begin with entirely different premises and take us in entirely different directions in terms of thinking about how the individual relates to the collective, what governments owe their people, and what citizens and subjects owe their state. This class will explore a number of these alternatives, including the Confucian account of virtue, the African concept of ubuntu ("I am because we are") and Native American concepts of justice and forgiveness. This comparison will also allow us to consider the relationship between medium and message, as we encounter ideas and values expressed in a range of mediums including analytical texts, manifestos, aphorisms, dramas, dialogues, myths and storytelling. In the service of this, the course is likely to include at least one historical simulation. The course will conclude by looking at responses to the Western injustice of colonialism, including Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth.