PHIL624 - The Philosophy of Justice and Community

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Nil

Teaching organisation

This unit is offered in synchronous national mixed-mode and involves 150 hours of focused learning. The total includes formally structured learning activities such as lectures, tutorials, online learning, videoconferencing, or supervision. The remaining hours typically involve reading, research, and the preparation of tasks for assessment.

Unit rationale, description and aim

Debates about social justice, and the role that governments play in helping to create a thriving community are as intensely relevant now as they have ever been. In this unit, students investigate the question of what makes for a just society and good community. Students will be required to explore to explore philosophical accounts of justice, and various ways in which the just society is conceptualised. They examine how different schools of political thought – including liberal egalitarian, libertarian, communitarian, Marxist and republican – attend to the issues of liberty, equality, and community. Students are asked to analyse and critically assess the approach the schools of thought take in balancing these sometimes competing values. They are also asked to evaluate how the theories could be used to address social and political problems confronting society today.  

The unit’s aim is to assist students to engage in constructive moral dialogue about important social and political issues. It also provides a platform for the development and enhancement of critical thinking skills that are important across a range of occupations or professions. 

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - identify and demonstrate comprehension of historically significant and influential accounts of justice and the good society (GA5)

LO2 - critically analyse selected theories of justice and accounts of the good society, evaluating strengths and weaknesses. (GA2, GA4, GA5, GA8, GA9)

LO3 - effectively present a coherent and well-reasoned philosophical position. (GA2, GA4, GA5, GA8, GA9) 

Graduate attributes

GA2 - recognise their responsibility to the common good, the environment and society 

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA8 - locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information 

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

Content

Topics will include:

• Theories of what constitutes a just society, both historical and contemporary
• Debates between perfectionism and liberalism
• Debates between liberal egalitarian, libertarian, communitarian and Marxist approaches to justice.
• Selected issues in applied and public ethics including such topics as distributive justice, foreign aid, and environmental responsibility.
• Balancing and attending to the values of equality and liberty. 
• Questions regarding the role of solidarity or community in society
• Questions regarding the nature and role of public goods in society

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit is offered in synchronous national mixed-mode and involves 150 hours of focused learning. The total includes formally structured learning activities such as lectures, tutorials, online learning, videoconferencing, or supervision. The remaining hours typically involve reading, research, and the preparation of tasks for assessment.

The unit has been designed as a blend of collaborative learning along with direct instruction to ensure that students develop an understanding of important philosophical concepts and theories. Students will be asked to engage in online discussions, provide written critiques of significant theories, and present their reasoned opinion on distinct philosophical positions. This structure ensures that students develop the ability to think critically and reflectively about the theories analysed.

These forms of instruction and engagement are designed to support students’ attainment of the learning outcomes. Direct instruction assists students in the identification and comprehension of important philosophical theories, while the written critiques and online discussions provide a venue for critical analysis and allow students to demonstrate an ability to develop a philosophically informed perspective of their own.  

Assessment strategy and rationale

The assessment strategy for this unit in philosophy is designed to facilitate developing understanding of important philosophical theories regarding a just and good society.

The early task is a relatively lightly weighted piece that assesses students’ understanding of essential terminology and theoretical material. The second task builds on this by assessing their ability to apply this basic knowledge to pertinent debates, as well as to begin to define their own positions on those debates. Both of these early tasks pave the way toward the final task, the research essay, in which they are required to select an important debate and to undertake further research in the field with a view to developing a critically-developed position of their own. 

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Beitz, C. (1979). Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hurka, T. (1993). Perfectionism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Marx, K. (2000). “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844” in Karl Marx Selected Writings. (ed). D. McLellan. New York: Oxford University Press

Mill, J. S. (2010). J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings. New York: Classic Books.

Rawls, J. (1999). A Theory of Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.

Raz, J. (1986) The Morality of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rousseau, J-J. (2003). On the Social Contract. (G.D.H. Cole, trans). New York: Dover.

Sandel, M. (1998, 2nd ed.). Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sen, A. (1992). Inequality Re-examined. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wolff, J. and De-Shalit. (2007) Disadvantage. New York: Oxford University Press.