John Rawls and Robert Nozick

Required Readings

Discussion Questions

(Write out brief answers to this week's discussion questions and submit them via a direct message to me on Slack no later than 11:59pm on Sunday, September 26th. Your answers should be brief, no more than a few sentences each. Be prepared to discuss them in class.)

1. What is the difference between a "historical" principle of justice and an "end-result" principle? Which kind of principle does Rawls have? What about Nozick?

2. There is an important distinction between human rights, which we have simply by virtue of being human and which societies can't fairly ignore, and societal rights, such as the right to drive on the right side of the road, which are granted to us by the conventional rules and laws of the society in which we live, but which could have been designed otherwise without violating our human rights. According to Nozick, which of these kind of rights are our property rights? Why is this important to his theory of justice?

3. Describe an intuitive counterexample to Nozick's theory of justice: either (a) a situation that he would say is just but that seems unjust, or (b) a situation that Nozick would say is unjust but that seems perfectly just to you.

Zoom Meeting

This week's Zoom meeting will be on Monday, September 27th, 11:10AM–12:25PM. Here is the link to join.

Second Writing Assignment

This week's writing assignment should be submitted to me in a direct message on Slack no later than 11:59pm on Thursday, September 30th. Your entire written assignment should be about 500 words long. (Longer is not better; it is important to be clear and concise.)

Your assignment this week is to describe an actual social policy that has recently been proposed by a politician, and to argue that John Rawls and Robert Nozick would disagree about whether it would be just to implement it. You have two options about what to argue: (a) Rawls would say that the policy would move us closer to a just society and Nozick would say the opposite, or (b) vice versa.

You must choose an actual policy proposal that has recently been proposed by an actual politician who occupied, or who was running for an elected office that governs over you. (It could be a president, a senator, a congressperson, a mayor, a city counsellor, etc., or a candidate for one of these positions) By a policy proposal, I mean something with some actual implementation details (like an actual policy about how to deliver healthcare), not a vague, general idea with no implementation details (like the idea that healthcare is a right).

You should also include a link to some evidence of the existence of the policy proposal that you discuss. The main thing I am looking for is to see that you understand both the theories of Nozick and Rawls well enough to apply them to a real-world policy. But it's also important that you understand the policy itself well enough to discuss it intelligently.