Master 2024/2025

Theory of Justice

Type: Elective course (Philosophical Studies)

Area of studies: Philosophy

Delivered by: School of Philosophy and Cultural Studies

Where: Faculty of Humanities

When: 2 year, 3 module

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of one campus

Instructors: Alexei Gloukhov

Master’s programme: Philosophical Antropology

Language: English

ECTS credits: 3

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This is an elective course offered in the second year of the master program ‘Philosophical Anthropology’. Justice is studied as a fundamental philosophical way of navigating complex poltitical reality. Course begins with the classical vision of humans as animals possessing language and in particular the common language of justice. Classical problem of justice and classical vision of language and community were reinterpreted in the Early Modernity with the consequence that rationality, rule-following, and normativity are considered to be the foundation of justice. The main part of the course focuses on the contemporary analytic theories of justice, relying either on individual or group rationality. We discuss deontology, utilitarianism, basics of game theory, Rawls and his critics such as Nozick, communitarians, Sen etc.; also Analytic Marxism, Feminist and Republican theories of justice. Course concludes with discussion of the typical Continental uneasiness in relation to justice in the works by Heidegger, Arendt, Lyotard, and Derrida.