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Dr Daniel Guillery

This course is available on the MA in Modern History, MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy, MSc in Philosophy of Economics and the Social Sciences, MSc in Philosophy of Science and MSc in Political Theory. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course will cover key topics in moral and political philosophy.

The course addresses questions such as the following (indicative examples only; precise content varies from year to year): What sacrifices are we required to make for the sake of others? Does it make a moral difference that a person is less well off than she could have been? Is it permissible to cause harm to others in order to prevent greater harm? Can it benefit or harm people to bring them into existence? Do individual actions make a difference to large-scale problems such as climate change and global inequality? What moral obligations do we have to obey the law? When, and how, can we be justified in resisting injustice? When we tax the rich to give to the poor are we restricting freedom, enhancing it or redistributing it? Can the cultural circumstances in which we grow up absolve us of blame for bad beliefs? Is private property in land justified? Do moral questions have objectively correct answers? Can the members of one culture legitimately criticise the moral norms of another culture? Do states act morally permissibly in excluding would-be immigrants from their territory? What kind of rights, if any, are grounded in the value of culture? How should we rectify historical wrongs?

Topics in other areas of moral and political philosophy may also be covered.

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the AT. 10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the WT.

Students will be expected to produce 2 essays in the AT and WT.

Thomson, J.J. ‘Self-Defense’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 (1991)

Otsuka, M. ‘Killing the Innocent in Self-Defense’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 23 (1994)

Quinn, W. ‘Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing’, The Philosophical Review 98 (1989)

Øverland, G. ‘Moral Obstacles: An Alternative to the Doctrine of Double Effect’, Ethics 124 (2014)

Parry, J. ‘Defensive Harm, Consent, and Intervention’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 43 (2017)

Geoff Sayre-McCord, 'Metaethics', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/metaethics/>

Matthew Chrisman, What is this thing called Metaethics?

Michael Smith, The Moral Problem;

J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

Nozick, R. Anarchy, State and Utopia

Locke, J. Second Treatise of Government

Cohen, G. A., 'Nozick on Appropriation', New Left Review, no. 150 (1985)

Jefferson, T., Letter to James Madison (1789)

Boxill, B., 'Black Reparations', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(2015)

Exam (50%, duration: 2 hours) in the spring exam period.
Essay (50%, 2000 words) in the WT.