JUSTICE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Catalog description

Open only to freshmen. This is a freshman seminar.Values/ethics course (V).Proceeding from the conflict, in Sophocles' Antigone, between the authority of the State and the rights of an individual, this course explores four concepts of justice: civil liberty, criminal justice (e.g. is the death penalty just?), distributive justice (entitlements owed by governments to their citizens), and justice as explored in Plato's Republic. We move back and forth between classical readings (Plato, the Bible, More, Locke, Engels, Rawls) and debates on modern issues of justice (abortion, affirmative action, free speech in shopping malls, inheritance rights, welfare rights, etc.).Faculty: R. COLBY