Moral & Political Philosophy

Course description: This course has two parts. The first part is intended to familiarise students with the works of classical political philosophers, such as Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes Bentham and Mill, as well as with such contemporary counterparts as J. Rawls, R. Dworkin, A. Sen, G.A. Cohen, T. Nagel and I. Berlin. The unifying theme of this part of the course will be the good society, and this idea will be explored by analysis of such cognate concepts as freedom, justice and equality. The second part of the course concentrates on what is technically called meta-ethics. Meta-ethics is a study of the way or ways in which moral language is like and unlike language used for other purposes. This part of the course may also be described as a protracted inquiry into the rationality of morals. It treats such topics as morality and knowledge, the nature of ethical disagreement, reason, emotion and morality, the is/ought question, and moral dilemmas.
Prerequisites: None

Teaching and learning methods: The course is lecture-based, supplemented by tutorials.

Methods of assessment and evaluation: Overall assessment is by essay.

Core texts:

C.B. MacPherson, The life and times of Liberal Democracy. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1977

R.E. Goodin and P. Pettit (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, Blackwell: Oxford, 1993, 1995.

J.S. Mill, On Liberty, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1974.

T. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, Oxford U. Press: Oxford, 1991.

J. Steiner, European Democracies, 3 rd edition, Longman: London, 1995.

W.D. Hudson, Modern Moral Philosophy, MacMillan, London 1970.

D.Z. Philips & H.O. Mounce, Moral Practices, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1970.

G.J.Warnock, The Object of Morality, Methuen, London 1971.

J.J. Thomson & G.Dworkin (eds.), Ethics , Harper & Row, New York 1968.

P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991.