Elements of Injustice

Office: Hall 1B

Office Hours: W, 2-4, Coop Café; or by apptmt

tjdonahueAThaverford.edu

What are the major injustices of our time? Race, gender, class, meritoracy? How do these alleged injustices interact with more personal harms, like manipulation, domination, coercion, exclusion, humiliation, degradation, objectification? How can we remedy these harms, and abolish oppression? This course examines leading theories of oppression that deal with these matters. Our aim is to give students the tools to build their own theories about these and other alleged injustices.

Course Requirements. To earn full credit, you must:

(1) Participate in class discussion. I know many people find this daunting. Nevertheless, try. One main aim of the course is to help you improve in argument.

(2) Submit 6 response papers. Each session, you may submit in hard copy a paper, of not more than 350 words, that examines some thesis that that week’s reading has argued. The paper should state the thesis and then argue for or against it. If you argue for it, you should provide your own reasons for it--not the author's reasons. If you argue against it, you should tell us what you think the truth is. Here's an example of arguing against the thesis: "Judith Shklar argues that it was better to proceed with the Tokyo and Nuremberg Trials than to summarily punish the accused, as Winston Churchill had proposed. I shall argue instead that it would have been better to follow Churchill's proposal and summarily punish the accused. My main reason will be that summarily punishing the top leaders while avoiding trials would have given the world the punishment it wanted to see, while ensuring that no one could argue that the Allies were using corrupt and unjust legal procedures to obtain predetermined political results. By contrast, the trials muddied the distinction between normal times and extraordinary times, and thus encouraged people to think that the Allies valued neither legality nor justice." Click here for guidelines on writing response papers. Note that for full credit, you need only submit 6 such papers.

(3) Submit a paper proposal. You are required to submit, in Week 8, a proposal for your final paper. The proposal should have a title, state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), give the key reasons by which you will defend the thesis, state two serious objections to your thesis, and state how you will respond to the objections. The proposal should be not more than 800 words long. (For tips on how to say why the question is important--i.e., to show that there's a more general question we can't fully answer until we've answered yours, check out Sections 4.1 and 4.2 of Wayne Booth et al, The Craft of Research (Chicago, 2016, available online through Tri-Co libraries.)

(4) Submit a final paper. You are required to submit, on the last day of exams, a final paper. The paper should state a question concerning one of the topics covered in the course, say why the question is important, state your answer to the question (i.e., your thesis), defend the thesis with argument, state two serious objections to your thesis, and respond to the objections. The paper should be not more than 4,000 words long.

Course Assessment. Course marks will be computed on the following distribution: Class Participation: 20%; Response Papers: 30% (5% each); Paper Proposal: 20%; Argumentative Paper: 30%

Course format. The course will be discussion oriented. I will usually begin sessions by presenting a thesis advanced in the week’s reading. I will discuss its implications. I will then ask one or many of you whether you think the thesis true or false, and why. We shall then examine the reasons you offer for your view. We shall then turn to the reasons the text offers in defense of the thesis. I will ask you what you think of those reasons, and so forth. The course in part aims to improve your skill in reasoned argument.

SCHEDULE

Session 1. Introduction

Session 2. Capitalist Domination?

Allen W. Wood, “Capitalist Exploitation,” Karl Marx¸2nd ed (Routledge, 2004), 242-264

Wood, “Alienation and Capitalism,” Karl Marx, 44-60

Richard Miller, “The Concept of a Ruling Class,” Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power, and History (Princeton UP 1985), 101-114 only

Session 3. Global Domination by the Meritocrats? Victim Groups: Individual Freedom, Collective Unfreedom?

Anthony Appiah, “The myth of meritocracy: Who really gets what they deserve?” The Guardian (19 Oct 2018)

Justin Gest, “The New Minority: A Counter-narrative and Its Politics,” The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality (Oxford UP 2016): 20-39

G. A. Cohen, “The Structure of Proletarian [White Working Class?] Unfreedom,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (1983): 3-33

Session 4. Individual Freedom, Collective Unfreedom? (continued) Global Male Supremacy?

Cohen, “The Structure of Proletarian [White Working Class?] Unfreedom,” Philosophy and Public Affairs

Marilyn French, "Introduction," "Systemic Discrimination against Women," The War against Women (Ballantine Books, 1992), READ ONLY pp. 9-51, 99-106

FIRST RESPONSE PAPER DUE

Session 5. Global Male Supremacy? Exploitation, Sexual Domination, Violence

Carole Pateman, "Wives, Slaves, and Wage Slaves," The Sexual Contract (Polity, 1988), pp. 119-133

Catharine MacKinnon, "Sexuality," Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard UP, 1989), pp. 126-154.

Ann E. Cudd, "Violence as a Force of Oppression," Analyzing Oppression (Oxford UP, 2006), pp. 85-98

SECOND RESPONSE PAPER DUE

Session 6. Do We Live under Global White Supremacy?

Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell UP, 1997), pp. 1-7, 19-40 [Haverford click here] [Bryn Mawr click here]

Mills, “White Supremacy as Sociopolitical System,” From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003): 177-194

THIRD RESPONSE PAPER DUE

Session 7. (1) The Nature of Oppression and Systematic Injustice. (2) The Role of Ideologies in Systematic Injustice.

Young, “Five Faces of Oppression,” Justice and the Politics of Difference, pp. 39-65

Ann E. Cudd, “Oppression: The Fundamental Injustice of Social Institutions,” Analyzing Oppression (Oxford UP, 2006): 1-29

Tommie Shelby, “Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory,” Philosophical Forum (2003) pp. 153-180.

SPRING BREAK!

Session 8. Ideology, Power, and Authority

Tommie Shelby, “Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory,” Philosophical Forum (2003) pp. 153-180

Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, 2nd ed (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 14-48

Raymond Geuss, “Authority,” History and Illusion in Politics (Cambridge UP, 2001): 37-42

PAPER PROPOSAL DUE by 11pm Tues March 19

Session 9. Authority and Coercion at Play in Injustices

Rae Langton, “Is Pornography Like the Law?” in Beyond Speech: Pornography and Analytic Feminist Philosophy, ed. Mari J. Mikkola (Oxford UP, 2017)

Susan Rae Peterson, “Coercion and Rape: The State As a Male Protection Racket,” in Mary Vetterling-Braggin et al, eds. 1977. Feminism and Philosophy. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 360-371

Robert Nozick, “Coercion,” in Socratic Puzzles (Harvard UP, 1997): 15-44, READ 15-22 ONLY

Session 10. (1) What's the Connection between Coercion, Manipulation, and Exploitation? (2) Is There Racial Exploitation, and If So, How Does It Work?

Allen W. Wood, “Coercion, Manipulation, Exploitation,” in Manipulation: Theory and Practice, ed. C. Coons and M. Weber (Oxford UP, 2014): 17-51

Charles W. Mills, “Racial Exploitation and the Payoff of Whiteness,” in Exploitation: From Practice to Theory, ed M. Deveaux and V. Panitch (Rowman Littlefield, 2017): 75-95

Optional: Robert E. Goodin, “Exploiting a Situation and Exploiting a Person,” in Modern Theories of Exploitation, ed. Andrew Reeve (Sage, 1987): 166-192

FOURTH RESPONSE PAPER DUE

Session 11. Manipulation and Objectification

Robert Noggle, “Manipulative Actions: A Conceptual and Moral Analysis,” American Philosophical Quarterly 33 (1996): 43-55

Anne Barnhill, “What Is Manipulation?” in Manipulation: Theory and Practice, ed. Coons and Weber (Oxford UP, 2014): 51-72

Martha Nussbaum, “Objectification,” Philosophy and Public Affairs (1995) 249-273 only

FIFTH RESPONSE PAPER DUE

Session 12. Domination and Alienation

Frank Lovett, “Domination: A General Analysis,” The Monist 84 (2001): 98-112

Sandra Lee Bartky, “Narcissism, Femininity, and Alienation,” Social Theory and Practice (1982)

Session 13. (1) Social Exclusion as Harm of Oppression. (2) Are All Oppressions Based in Domination Contracts?

Brian Barry, “Social Exclusion, Social Isolation and the Distribution of Income,” CASEpaper 1998

Charles W. Mills, “The Domination Contract,” Meritum 8 (2013): 71-114

Optional:

Mari J. Mikkola, “Dehumanization,” The Wrong of Injustice: Dehumanization and Its Role in Feminist Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2016)

SIXTH RESPONSE PAPER DUE

Session 14. How to Explain Oppressions?

Ann Cudd, “How to Explain Oppression,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences (2005)

Sally Haslanger, “What Is a Social Structural Explanation?” Philosophical Studies (2015)

FINAL PAPER DUE LAST DAY OF EXAMS