Option #1: revise and extend your first paper.
What I would expect from those of you who do want to revise and extend your first paper is the following:
- A final paper that is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-12 pages.
- A more thorough, complete, and polished version.
- A version that addresses whatever deficiencies were pointed out in my comments on your first version.
- A version that takes into account (in some way) the things we have read since you produced your first version.
As an example of this last item consider this: Our current economic arrangements would not be endorsed by any of the theories we have studied. Even the libertarian theory would find fault with the history that led to our current economic inequalities, what with slavery and the violent dispossession of native peoples, and so on. (Libertarians would also find fault with the various measures that our government takes to try to reduce inequalities). And liberal egalitarian and Marxist theories would find much to criticize in our current socio-economic systems. So, I think it is fair to say that, regardless of your particular views about economic justice, you will find it relevant to address Iris Marion Young’s discussion of the nature of our responsibility for acting to make our society more just.
And her account of what she calls ‘structural injustice’ would be relevant to pretty much any perspective. For a libertarian, it wmight be something that needed to be refuted (since it involves the claim that injustice can be produced by a series of voluntary and blameless transactions), while for liberals and Marxists it might help to explain something that the libertarian is missing.
Option #2: write a new paper dealing with new material.
Basic assignment: Write a 6-9 page (typed, double-spaced) paper explaining and supporting your position on some issue raised by one or more of the writers we have read (or will have read) in the second half of this course.
Some guidelines:
- Your paper should contain your thoughts and opinions, not just a summary of the views of Karl Marx or Iris Marion Young (or whoever). Tell me what you think, not just what other people have said.
- Do, however, address the position and the arguments of at least one of the philosophers we have studied. Give references to the texts to support your interpretation of their views.
- Be sure that the question or issue your paper is addressing is clear and well focused.
- Be sure that you have provided a clear statement of your position on that issue (or your answer to that question).
- In addition to explaining what you think, your paper should contain reasons why you take the position you do. Your main job is to explain why a reasonable person should agree with the opinion or position you are expressing.
- Include in your paper at least one statement of an objection to your view and a reply to that objection. (More than one would be better.) How might someone who disagreed with you criticize your argument? And how can you respond to that criticism?
- You are not required (or encouraged) to consult any other sources besides those already assigned for class reading. If you do use any other sources, give them credit for whatever you take from them: list them in a bibliography at the end of your paper and give specific references for any ideas you have borrowed.
Some possible topics (if you want to develop a different topic, check it out with me before you write your paper):
- All-purpose formula for a topic: Choose one of the course readings. Analyze and assess an argument (or, at least, a claim) made in that text. (This is probably easier to do if you disagree with the claim or argument. But it can also work to defend that claim or argument against objections that you think are misguided.)
- Famously, Marx said that the principle that should govern economic life in “the higher phase of communist society” is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” Evaluate this slogan as a conception of economic justice.
- Feminists have criticized the liberal egalitarian conception of justice developed by writers like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin for ignoring the fact that a significant portion of the economic activity of a society like ours takes place, not in the realm of the marketplace (where people exchange goods and services for money) but in the realm of the household or family (where people, mostly women, produce goods and services without being paid – at least not in any formal way). As a result, economic (and other) relationships within the family are not scrutinized by these theories of justice. How would the liberal egalitarian theory have to change in order to deal adequately with this criticism?
- Why does john powell think that the ‘colorblind’ approach to racial justice is misquided and inadequate? Explain and evaluate his case against this view.
- Some people have claimed that racial issues do not need special attention from a theory of economic justice, and that the only social category that really matters to our understanding of (and struggle for) economic justice is the category of class. How does john powell try to show that this suggestion is wrong and that race matters in its own right. Is he right about this?
- Explain and evaluate Iris Marion Young’s concept of ‘structural injustice”.
- Explain and evaluate Young’s ‘social connection’ model of responsibility for injustice.