As discussed the topic for the April meeting is: John Rawls' "Theory of Justice" and its critics.

Reading

The primary sources are:

John Rawls "Theory of Justice" written in 1971 and Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State and Utopia" written in1973. Rawls and Nozick were contemporaries and Nozick's book is considered a response to TJ (as the Thoery of Justice is apparently affectionately known within political philosophy circles). The Wikipedia entry for TJ is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice and for "Anarchy, State and Utopia" is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia.

Apparently these books are fairly heavy reading so here is an eclectic selection of summaries of Rawls, Nozick and "Rawls vs Nozick" I have located on the internet:

Here is a link to a free sample from Adam Swift's book "Political Philosophy: A beginners' guide for students and policiticians" - the Rawls summary goes from pages 21 to 30 and is not complete, but gives a good basic intro.

Here is what appears to be some lecture notes from Macquarie University on Nozick, with some comparison to Rawls: http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y64l17.html

Here is an article "John Rawls and Robert Nozick: liberalism v libertarianism" which appears on a website called the "Offbeat Archive": http://offbeathistory.com/john-rawls-and-robert-nozick-liberalism-vs-libertarianism/ It is very short, but has some handy comparisons between the two, and poses some questions for consideration.

Here is what appears to be the introduction to the published papers of some kind of ecomonics symposium which contains a good summary of Nozick v Rawls: http://college.holycross.edu/eej/Volume4/V4N1P1_7.pdf

Here is a link to an article from the American Conservative titled "Going off the Rawls, Libertarians have adopted the LEft's favourite philosopher": http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2008/jul/28/00024/ One to read I would have thought! To contrast, here is an opinion piece from the SMH website from a fourth year Communications student at Sydney Uni: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/09/1065676093092.html

Andrew notes that Peter Singer mentioned Rawls more than once I think in Practical Ethics and The 'Rich and Poor' chapter of Practical Ethics may be relevant to this issue.

The Stanford Encyclopediea of Philosophy has detailed entries on Rawls: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/ and distributive justice: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-distributive/

For keen readers here is a useful bibliograghy (with mini reviews) of further reading: http://www.distributive-justice.com/theory/bibliography-en.htm

Video

If you feel like a break from reading Andrew directed me to Harvard Uni's Justice webpage with Michael Sandel, author of "Justice: what is the right thing to do?". There you can find a video of Michael Sandel's Harvard Justice Lectures - No 8 which promises to discuss whether it is fair that Judge Judy gets paid $25million while US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gets $200,000. Andrew also points out that Wikipedia says that the evil billionaire Mr Burns on the Simpsons is believed to be modelled on Sandel - same looks and mannerisms, but diametrically opposite moral views.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sandel. This lecture is highly recommended, and there are lots of discussion points on the website as well.

Podcasts

The philosophy bites website includes this podcast http://philosophybites.com/2010/02/jonathan-wolff-on-john-rawls-a-theory-of-justice.html

Another philophy bites podcast is "GH Cohen on the Inequality of Wealth": http://philosophybites.com/2007/12/ga-cohen-on-ine.html Presumably this relates to Cohen's book "If you're an egalitarian, how comme you are so rich?" which is described in the bibliography above in the following terms: "the last few chapters of this book very convincingly criticize Rawls from the egalitarian point of view. Over the last couple of years this criticism has been in the center of discussion about distributive justice."

The Philosopher's Zone podcast "Martha Nussbaum- the Social Contract", discusses Rawls' theory and critiques it (from the left?) http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/martha-nussbaum---part-1---the-social-contract/3174420