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Contemporary political philosophy, both as an academic discipline and as a field of knowledge, is marked by two clear breaks.

It is often argued that the first had several causes, among them the emergence of an empirical political science in the early decades of the XXth century, which seemed to render obsolete the Western philosophical-political tradition's way of posing normative political questions. But also the deep trauma of the Second World War, in which the very idea of a “Western” tradition, including a tradition in political philosophy, was put to the text of the shoah. In such circumstances, it has become usual to speak, in the Anglosphere, of ‘death’ of political philosophy (who could write and discuss about political philosophy after Auschwitz?). This contrasts perhaps with the continuous strength of the discipline in other places, including continental Europe, where any temptation to “technify” politics was kept in check by continued social conflict and tensions, not least triggered by decolonisation.

The second would be the result of the emergence of a new way of thinking about political theory, essentially consisting of applying analytical philosophy to the discussion of political questions, paradigmatically represented by egalitarian liberalism, which in itself would have made possible the ‘rebirth’ of the discipline in the early seventies of the last century (so after the death there would have come the resurrection). A key date in this regard is 1971, the year in which John Rawls' A Theory of Justice was published (a book which we will analyse in depth). Rawls offers, once and at the same time, an inter-subjective foundation of normative principles (“the two principles of justice”) that can be applied to the main social controversies and makes use of the theory to speculate on how the basic institutions of society should look like. The ability of Rawlsian theory to be several things at the same time is fundamental in explaining its success, initially in the Anglosphere, later throughout the ‘Western’ world (and beyond), and which, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, will become a true hegemony in the field of political philosophy. Something made possible not only by cohorts of political philosophers who comment on, elaborate and extend the Rawlsian model, but above all by those who, while harshly criticising the substantive positions of Rawls and the Rawlsistas, do so by developing projects that imitate the structure of the Theory of Justice. This is the case of Nozick's libertarianism, Sandel's communitarianism, Moller Okin's feminism or Gerald A. Cohen's analytical Marxism. This may be said to give rise to what we can call the ‘Rawlsian bloc’, as a set of theories that share the Rawlsian way of doing political philosophy, even if they differ in terms of the formulation and application of the principles of justice.

This course aims to combine the detailed study of the ‘Rawlsian block’ with the reopening of the discussion about the meaning and purpose of political philosophy, both in terms of the work of conceptual elaboration and the elucidation of normative standards. Or put in other terms. First, to take Rawls and the ‘Rawlsian bloc’ very seriously, offering students the keys to understanding both the main elements of Rawls' work and the debates surrounding it, and in doing so, to situate it in its social, political, economic and cultural context. Second, to open up the ‘object of study’, avoiding any form of reductionism and/or adanism, by considering a wide range of ways of doing political philosophy, which imply other research programmes, other frameworks for the study of political philosophy. Third, to give the means to students to develop their own research agendas in political philosophy.

It would be absurd to ignore the centrality of the Rawlsian paradigm, which after half a century has become a point of reference for philosophical-political reflection (perhaps we should say in the field of social sciences in the broad sense), and by reference to which a good part of the remaining political theories are configured. Hence the weight assigned in the syllabus both to the political philosophy of Rawls, to which five weeks of discussion will be devoted, and to the reconstruction and critique of the debates around Rawlsism with neo-liberals and ordoliberals, communitarians and feminists. Specifically, as will be seen, it includes not only a central theme dedicated to giving an account of the premises and theses of Rawlsian political liberalism, but four others to the analysis of the main polemics against and with Rawls: the one opened by the author of the Theory of Justice himself against utilitarianism, the neoliberalist censure articulated by Nozick, the ordo-liberal programme of the Freiburg school and Wilhelm Röpke, the diverse and different communitarian amendments, epitomised by Michael Walzer and Michael Sandel, the and criticisms coming from the different variations of feminism.

All of this guided by a basic principle: that of beginning by placing each of the theories in the best possible light, ‘internalising’ the intuitions and questions to which they respond, situating them in their social, economic, political and cultural context.

The course is addressed to all students in the humanities and in the social sciences with a keen interest on the normative dimension of the fundamental structures of contemporary societies.

We will consider the basic questions at the basis of the social order, such as who should be entitled to be full member of the political community, why and when we should obey the law, what rights should members recognise to each other (and to non members) or which duties should be acknowledged in a political community. But we will also study mobility justice (with special attention paid to asylum seekers), environmental justice, tax justice or the normative foundations of currency (money) in modern polities.

Previous knowledge of the key currents and the key themes in classic political philosophy (from the proto-democratic forms of the Greek poleis to the XIXth century) is an asset, but not a necessary condition to be able to make the best out of the course. A basic historical knowledge will also prove of great use.

·        Thorough understanding and critical examination of both the main contemporary politico-philosophical theories and their critique

·        Contextualisation of the main contemporary politico-philosophical theories, in particular by elucidating the social, political, economic and cultural issues that underpin justice claims, and identifying the contemporary political theories have had on social and political developments

·        In-depth study of the social, economic, political and cultural struggles that shaped the main theories and visions of justice

·        Development of applied normative judgement by confronting the concrete problems raised by the effective realisation of justice claims

Week 1: The Trajectory of Political Philosophy in the XXth and the XXIst Centuries

The Rawlsian bloc: Daniel Chandler, Free and Equal, London: Penguin, 2023, Conclusion, 247-52

Resurgent Neo-ordoliberalism: Milei’s Speech, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/special-address-by-javier-milei-president-of-argentina/

Radical democratic visions: Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism, London: Verso Books, Introduction, XIII-XVII

 

Week 2: Rawls before the Theory of Justice

Rawls, Outline for a Decision Procedure in Ethics, CP 1-19

Rawls. Justice as Fairness, CP 47-72

 

Week 3: A Theory of Justice (1): Foundations and Distributive Justice

A) Foundations

Rawls, TJ, Main Idea of the Theory (11-17); Rawls, TJ  Original Position and Justification (pages 17-22); Rawls, TJ, Veil of Ignorance (pages 136-142);  Rawls TJ Two Principles of Justice (60-63)

B) Distributive Justice

Rawls, TJ, The Reasoning Leading to the Two Principles of Justice (150-161); Rawls, TJ, The Main Grounds for the Two Principles of Justice (175-183); Rawls, TJ, Some Remarks about Economic Systems (265-274);

 

Week 4: A Theory of Justice (2): Civil Disobedience and Justice Between Generations

A) Civil Disobedience

Rawls, TJ, The Duty to Comply with an Unjust Law (350-355); Rawls, TJ, The Status of Majority Rule (356-362); Rawls, TJ, The Definition of Civil Disobedience (363-368); Rawls, TJ, The Justification of Civil Disobedience (371-377); Rawls, TJ, The Role of Civil Disobedience (382-391)

B) Justice Between Generations

Rawls, TJ, Justice Between Generations (284-292)

 

Week 5: Rawls After the Theory of Justice: Political Liberalism, Law of the Peoples, the Restatement

Rawls, PL, Lecture I: Fundamental Ideas (3-46);

Rawls, JF, Preface (XV-XVIII); Rawls; JF, Part IV: Institutions of a Just Basic Structure, sections §41: Property-Owning Democracy: Introductory Remarks; §The Fair Value of the Equal Political Liberties

Rawls, CP,  Fifty Years after Hiroshima, (565-572); Rawls, The Law of Peoples, (CP 529-564)

 

Week 6: The Neo-Ordo-Liberal Counterrevolution

A) The Ordos

Böhm, F., Eucken, W., Grossmann-Doerth, H. (1989). The Ordo Manifesto of 1936. In: Peacock, A., Willgerodt, H. (eds) Germany’s Social Market Economy: Origins and Evolution. Trade Policy Research Centre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20145-7_2;

Müller-Armack, A. (1989). The Meaning of the Social Market Economy. In: Peacock, A., Willgerodt, H. (eds) Germany’s Social Market Economy: Origins and Evolution. Trade Policy Research Centre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20145-7_6;

Röpke, Economic Order and International Law, 86 Collected Courses of the Academy of International Law, 1954, 203-73.

 

B) The Neos

Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (condensed version), London: IEA, 31-63

Robert Nozick, Distributive Justice in Anarchy, State, Utopía, New York: Basic Books 1974, 149-231

Robert Nozick, ‘Free Enterprise in America’, Encyclopedia Britannica, Annual Supplement, 1976;

Robert Nozick, ‘Who Would Choose Socialism?’, Reason, May 1978, 22-3

 

Week 7: The different Communitarianisms

Michael J Sandel, The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self, (1984) 12 Political Theory 81-96

Michael Walzer, Complex Equality, in Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality, London: Martin Robertson, 1983, 3-30

 

Week 8: The different Feminisms

Iris Marion Young, Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship, (1989) 99 Ethics 250-74

Lorna Finlayson, An Introduction to Feminism, Cambridge: Cambridge 2016, 4 (De)constructing coat-racks: feminism, sex and gender, pages 25 to 51.

Judith Butler, Introduction and Conclusions of Who’s Afraid of Gender?, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2024.

Nancy Fraser, Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler, in Nancy Fraser, The Fortunes of Feminism, 175-88

Week 9: Radical Democratic Visions

A) Analytical Marxism

G A Cohen, The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom, 12 (1983) Philosophy and Public Affairs, 3-33

John E Roemer, Exploitation, Alternatives and Socialism, 92 (1982) Economic Journal 87-107

B) Radical Democracy

C. Douglas Lummis: Radical Democracy, chapter 1, 14-44, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996

Albert, Michael, and Robin Hahnel. “Participatory Planning.” Science & Society 56, no. 1 (1992): 39–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40403236.

 

Week 10: Mobility Justice

H Arendt, ‘The Perplexities of the Rights of Man’ in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 290-302

Carens, Joseph H. “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” The Review of Politics 49, no. 2 (1987): 251–73. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1407506.

Walzer, Michael, ‘Membership’, in Spheres of Justice, 31-63

 

Heller, Hermann. "Political Democracy and Social Homogeneity". Weimar: A Jurisprudence of Crisis, edited by Arthur Jacobson and Bernhard Schlink, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, pp. 256-265. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520929685-025

 

Finlayson, Lorna, ‘If This Isn’t Racism, What is? The Politics of the Philosophy of Immigration, (2020) 94 Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 115-139, https://doi.org/10.1093/arisup/akaa013

 

Week 11: Tax Justice

J A Schumpeter, The Crisis of the Tax State. International Economic Papers, 4:5-38

R A Musgrave A Theory of Public Finance. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959, chapter 1: A multiple theory of the public household

K Wicksell, A New Principle of Just Taxation. In Buchanan, James M. and Musgrave, Richard A. (eds.). Classics in the Theory of Public Finance. London & New York: MacMillan, pp. 72-118.

 

Week 12: Currency Justice

Stefan Eich, The Modern Depoliticization of Money: John Locke and the Great Recoinage of 1696, in The Currency of Politics, Pricenton University Press, 2022

Lapavitsas, Costas. 2023. “The Limits of Currency Politics.” European Law Open 2(3): 636–53. doi: 10.1017/elo.2023.50.

Kapadia, Anush. 2024. “Democratic Sovereignty Makes Money.” In A Political Theory of Money, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter, 219–33.

 

Week 13: Environmental Justice

Antonio Turiel, Petrocalipsis, Barcelona: Editorial Alfabeto, 2020

Nancy Fraser, Climates of Capital, New Left Review, 127, 2021, 94-127

Kohei Saito, Slowdown, The Degrowth Manifesto, London: Astra House, 2024, chapter 1: Climate Change and the Imperial Mode of Living

 

Week 14: A New Agenda for Political Philosophy?

Students will have to undergo a final written exam which will weigh 80% of the final mark, with 20% being assigned on the basis of the qualitative input to the discussions during the part of each class in seminar mode.

Subject to adequate means being available to ensure the authorship of the essays, students will be offered the possibility of writing an essay on a topic related to some of the themes considered in the course, subject to previous agreement of topic with the lecturer. The essay will have between 4000 and 5500 words, and will have to engage with three or more books and include a review of one of the books. Students may be require to present in a public session the contents of their essay

Among the handbooks devoted specifically to contemporary political philosophy, most cover exclusively the ‘Rawlsian block’. Among them, Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. More succinct, but complementary to Kymlicka's, is Roberto Gargarella, Teorías de la Justicia después de Rawls. Un breve manual de Filosofía Política, Barcelona: Paidós, 1999. In Portuguese, a multi-handed handbook, which opts for the interesting option of including a series of lessons on applied questions of political philosophy is João Cardoso Rosas (ed.), Manual de Filosofia Política, Lisbon: Almedina, 2013. Italian and French manuals tend to go beyond the ‘Rawlsian bloc’, but also beyond the contemporary period. See Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, Philosophie Politique, Paris: PUF, 2007 (new edition in a single volume), Stefano Petrucciani, Modelli di filosofia política, Turin: Einaudi, 2003 or Sebastiano Maffettone, Filosofia Politica. Una piccola introduzione. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013. A broad thematic design can be found in Mariano Croce and Andrea Salvatore, Filosofia política: Le nuove frontiere, Bari: Laterza, 2012. Although broad in its scope, David Miller's concise introduction, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. An introduction that revolves around five broad themes, from social justice to democracy, and which may be useful as a supplement, is Adam Swift, Political Philosophy. A Beginners' Guide for Students and Politicians. Oxford: Polity, 2013, third edition. In Spanish, see the collection edited by Iñigo González Ricoy and Jahel Queralt (eds.), Razones Públicas. Una Introducción a la Filosofía Política. Barcelona: Ariel, 2021. A very interesting anthology of materials, although more than twenty-five years old, is the one edited by Robert E Goodin and Philip Pettit, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.