Winda

Harvard ER22: Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Contents · 12

  1. 01-The Moral Side of MurderExplores moral dilemmas about sacrificing one life to save five, and how intention, action, and responsibility shape judgments of right and wrong.
  2. 02-Putting a Price Tag on LifeBentham’s utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis, including debates over valuing lives in the Philip Morris smoking study and Ford Pinto case.
  3. 03-Free to ChooseIntroduces libertarianism and its defense of individual rights, then examines objections to paternalistic and morals legislation.
  4. 04-This Land Is My LandLocke’s theory of natural rights, self-ownership, and private property, including why rights are inalienable and how labor can establish ownership.
  5. 05-Hired GunsLocke’s limits on government, consent and political obligation, and the debate over conscription, military service, and the Civil War draft’s buyout system.
  6. 06-Mind Your MotiveKant’s account of human dignity, autonomy, and freedom, and how acting from self-given moral law differs from following desires.
  7. 07-A Lesson in LyingKant’s accounts of autonomy, duty, dignity, and the universal moral law, and how freedom makes categorical imperatives possible.
  8. 08-What's a Fair StartRawls’s principles of justice: equal basic liberties and the difference principle, which permits inequalities only when they benefit the least advantaged.
  9. 09-Arguing Affirmative ActionExamines affirmative action in university admissions, weighing race-conscious selection against fairness, individual merit, and unequal educational opportunity.
  10. 10-The Good CitizenAristotle’s teleological theory of justice links political authority and civic honors to politics’ purpose of cultivating virtue and the good life.
  11. 11-The Claims of CommunityContrasts Kantian freedom and liberal individualism with Aristotle’s virtue-centered politics and MacIntyre’s narrative self, inherited obligations, and communal responsibility.
  12. 12-Debating Same-Sex MarriageDefends narrative identity and obligations of solidarity, distinguishing relativist justice from justice grounded in moral worth.