What Is Justice?: Classic And Contemporary Readings

Description:
'What is Justice?' was one of Socrates' most provocative and to this day unresolved questions. What is Justice? is an attempt to bring together many of the most prominent and influential writings on the topic of justice, both before and after Socrates, with particular emphasis on questions of justice in the modern world, especially in (more or less) egalitarian, democratic societies. The book places special emphasis on 'social contract' theories of justice, both ancient and modern, culminating in the monumental work of John Rawls and various responses to his work. This book also puts special emphasis on questions of retributive justice and punishment that are typically excluded from volumes concerned with civil and 'distributive' justice. In this new edition the editors expand and bring up-to-date both the readins on justice and punishment and more recent responses to Rawls' work, including Rawls' own most recent work. This book is designed to be flexible for use in very different courses and contexts and comprehensible to a wide variety of students and readers. It presupposes no philosophical or specialized background. The book is divided into five parts, together with a general introduction to the subject and an updated bibliography. Part One includes classical sources from Homer, Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, the Koran, Aquinas, and Mencius. Part Two includes readings on the state of nature and the social contract from Hobbes and Locke to Rawls, Nozick, Gauthier, and Baier. Part Three includes the Declaration of Independence and Amendments to the US Constitution and discussions of property and social justice from Locke, Hume, and Adam Smith to Engels, Marx, Mill, von Hayek, and some contemporary authors. Part Four includes a wide variety of readings on punishment, several with specific concerns about the death penalty. Part Five begins with selections from Rawls' work and includes responses from Dworkin, Nagel, Nozick, MacIntyre, Sandel, Walzer, Okin and Rawls himself. Every selection is preceded by a brief introduction, providing some biography, history, and context for the reading, and each of the five parts begins with an introduction to the topics to be discussed. Every selection, however, is self-contained, so that the readings can be selected in virtually any order to suit the needs of the instructor or reader.

Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION; PART ONE: CLASSICAL SOURCES; Homer, from the Iliad; 'Justice, Equality, Desert,' from the Bible; Plato from the Republic; Aristotle, from the Nicomachean Ethics; 'Justice, Retribution, and Mercy,' from the Koran; Aquinas, from Summa Theologica; Mencius, from On the Mind; PART TWO: JUSTICE AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT; Hobbes, from Leviathan; Locke, from Second Treatise on Government; Rousseau, from A Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract; Hegel, from Phenomenology of Spirit; Rawls, from A Theory of Justice; Nozick, from Anarchy, State, and Utopia; Gauthier, from 'The Social Contract as Ideology'; Baier, from 'Trust and Antitrust'; PART THREE: JUSTICE AND SOCIETY; The Declaration of Independence and Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America; Locke, from Second Treatise on Government; Hume, from An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Justice and A Treatise of Human Nature; Adam Smith, from A Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations; Kant, from Philosophy of Law; Hegel, from Philosophy of Right; Mill, from Utilitarianism; Engels, from Anti-Duhring, and Marx, from A Critique of the Gotha Programme; von Hayek, from The Mirage of Social Justice; Bernard Williams, from 'The Idean of Equality; David Miller, from Social Justice; PART FOUR: JUSTICE AND PUNISHMENT; Pietro Marongiu and Graeme Newman, from Vengeance; Nozick, from Philosphical Explanations; Bentham, from Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Kant, from Philosophy of Law; Hegel, from Philosophy of Right; Nietzsche, from On the Genealogy of Morals; Rawls, from 'Two Concepts of Rules'; Michael Moore, from 'The Moral Worth of Retribution'; Jean Hampton, from 'The Moral Education Theory of Punishment'; Robert Solomon, from A Passion for Justice; United States Supreme Court, Gregg v. Georgia; Hugo Bedau, from 'Capital Punishment and Retributive Justice'; Ernst van den Haag, from 'Deterrence and the Death Penalty'; Camus, from 'Reflections on the Guillotine'; PART FIVE: THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE ON DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE; Rawls, from A Theory of Justice; Dworkin, from 'The Original Position'; Thomas Nagel, from 'Rawls on Justice'; Nozick, from Anarchy, State and Utopia; MacIntyre, from After Virtue; Michael Sandel, from Liberalism and the Limits of Justice; Michael Walzer, from Spheres of Justice; Susan Moller Okin, from Justice, Gender and the Family; Rawls, from 'Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical'; BIBLIOGRAPHY