What does “justice” require when one wishes to “promote the general welfare”? In this course we will consider two opposing views. The first is that of John Rawls, as espoused in his book, “A Theory of Justice. In his view, justice requires government policies to promote equality of opportunity. It also requires that inequalities of income, however generated, be tolerate only insofar as they do not imply inequality of opportunity to improve any person’s chances of material improvement. An opposing view is espoused by Robert Nozick in “Anarchy, State and Utopia. His basic argument is that “Justice” involves a judgement of individual behavior, not an assessment of the statistical properties of the distribution of income. The objective of the course is to consider their respective arguments in light of contemporary events.
((Jack Ochs - Tuesday - Zoom))
