Course starts from scratch. We will obviously talk about Hobbes, Rousseau, and others.
Political philosophy is all Plato.
Most political philosophy until now was focused on domestic justice (within the nation-state).
We start with Hobbes (modern political philosophy); first half of course is old, second half is more or less contemporary philosophers.
Prof. on Utilitarianism: Bentham will be discussed as the progenitor of this theory,
Effective Altruism (following Singer): many people want to engage in charity work, but most of this charity work is done inefficiently, f.e. 20 to cure a person from glaucoma in a developing country.
[Are we getting an advertisement for Singer’s charity rn?]
Happiness in the Aristotelian sense ≠ happiness in the utilitarian sense. Latter is just lack of pain and pleasure.
Libertarians will read John Locke in 2 weeks;
Nozick wrote a brilliant book on the Anarchy, State and Utopia. Nozick was replying to Rawls’ Theory of Justice: Tax is deeply problematic. He wants the minimal state. Individual rights take the highest precedence.
Taxation is theft. (- prof. quoting Nozick)
Someone is talented at basketball. Everyone’s invited and you have to pay to come in; not forced, but allowed to see Will Chamberlain play. A year later, a number of people have come to see him play every Friday out of your own volition.
Chamberlain gets really rich, and we all get a little poorer.
Why on Earth would we now think it is fine to tax Chamberlain after we have voluntarily given it to him.
“Liberty [of each and every one of us to go on Friday and spend money] upsets patterns [patterns of distribution of Wealth]”
A lot of the people try to disprove Nozick. He is a libertarian who thinks there is self-ownership, and of what your body produces. Most people believe that the state cannot change (/own) your body.
[Communism is when shared eye (and toothbrush)]
We will talk a lot about Rawls. Some believe he is the most dominant person in political philosophy in the 20th century. He proposed a way to combine liberty and equality: veil of ignorance [!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
liberal egalitarianism ^
maximin → give the most to the least privileged
Dworkin criticizes Rawls ← Elizabeth Anderson completely disagrees
Dworkin says “if you’re poor cause you’re lazy you shouldn’t get privileges”
Rawls kinda said it didn’t matter
Dworkin - resources should be endowment-neutral (not born into richness, “brute luck”), and ambition-sensitive (if you put in more work, you should get more).
Insurance [genuinely did not expect this one] turns luck into option luck.
Brute luck, and option luck.
Option luck is investing in some stock and losing it all.
“the great intellectual enemy Elizabeth Anderson” says the opposite and disagrees strongly with Dworkin. She says we should not make such moral judgements about our fellow members of society, and think of all as being in a position of equal membership.
“Citizens should refrain from making intrusive moralizing judgements about how the ought to have used their opportunities […]”
Van Parijs - Universal Basic Income guy. “Many things, many examples…” being born with a talent important to your society as opposed to one less relevant is a ‘gift.’ Gifts are distributed unequally and […] having a high school teacher that says something very clever that inspires you to take the right job is also a ‘gift.’ You can’t track the consequences of such gifts, who gets them and who doesn’t: we take all those gifts and we try to put a price on it. And that’s the money the global citizen will get.
Rawls thinks UBI is crazy and wrote an article against it; Malibu surfers, who spend their lives surfing, should not be entitled to public funds to support their lifestyles. ‘Why Malibu Surfers Should Be Fed’ - article by Van Parijs against Rawls, saying […]
Sen received a Nobel prize in economics. Capability theory says that many of the people on the list before Sen and Nussbaum are resource fetishists: people who believe resources are all that matters. Sen contends that resources are merely instruments: they give you food, mobility, shelter, etc. We should look less at the perfect way to allocate resources, but more at what people could do with the resources. Functionings are the things you can do with resources. This theory is normative, but also has an important empirical dimensions: you can measure the functionings of resources. This gave rise to the Human Development Index.
Nussbaum has become famous for a theory that says there are 10 universal basic capabilities that everyone should have: having access to a job, having access to food, …
Someone who is pregnant has different nutritional needs: we are not interested in a perfect allocation in a Dworkian manner, according to how much work she puts in; instead, we give her the resources that result in the most functionings ← nussbaum and sen.