杏吧论坛

Dr Remco Heessen

This course is compulsory on the BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

In this course, PPE students are placed in reading groups to discuss books by scholars working at the intersection of Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Philosophy faculty guide their selection of books and subsequent reading and research on the book. Each group organizes a research seminar on their book or a related topic open to the wider 杏吧论坛 PPE community.

4 hours of lectures, 10 hours of classes and 6 hours of workshops in the AT.

No meetings take place in reading week (Week 6).

Each student will lead the reading group discussion once, in the term in which their reading group takes place.

In addition, each student will be asked to write a 250 word abstract of the book review they would like to write. Students will be placed in small groups to write their book reviews on the basis of these abstracts.

Examples of recent books appropriate for PPE reading groups:

• Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) (2017)
• Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity (2018)
• Anthony Atkinson, Measuring Poverty Around the World (2019)
• David Colander and Craig Freedman, Where Economics Went Wrong: Chicago’s Abandonment of Classical Liberalism (2018)
• Robert Goodin and Kai Spiekermann, An Epistemic Theory of Democracy (2018)
• Kate Manne, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2017)
• Cailin O’Connor, The Origins of Unfairness (2019)
• Eric Posner and Glen Weyl, Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society (2018)
• Robert Sugden, The Community of Advantage (2018)
• Paul Tucker, Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State (2018)
• Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (2017)

The students will also get the chance to make their own proposals of books to read, which we will vet.

Class participation (20%), group exercise (20%), group essay (40%) and assignment (20%) in the AT.

Participation (of which attendance is a crucial part) counts for 20% of the grade. 20% is for doing one’s fair share in helping to organize one of the research seminars, assessed by a short written reflection on one’s contribution. Students will be asked to produce a 3,000 word book review in small groups, which counts for 40% of the grade. A first draft will be peer reviewed and discussed at a feedback workshop. The student contribution to the peer review assignment (listed as 'assignment' in the list of assessments above) will count for the final 20% of the grade (note that the book review is not peer assessed, that is, other students’ feedback will not directly affect a group’s grade for the book review).