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Philosophy and Social Justice

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Identify some of the features and values you associate with a just society. For example, does it include access to quality education, basic healthcare, and housing? How involved should the national government be with local issues and personal decisions about healthcare and other issues? Is the opportunity for economic equality important regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, and so on?
Present an account of at least one social/political philosophy from the assigned readings with support from the course texts and online lectures that might achieve the values/features you identify. For example, you might discuss classical theories, social contract theory (including Rawls' veil of ignorance), Marxism, and/or feminist philosophy.
Explain how the theory would achieve the just society you envision.
Make comparisons between the just society you envision and the United States. You may need to do additional research to support the claims you make about social and economic conditions in the U.S.
Identify and explain an additional political theory that would take a different approach.

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Solution Summary

The philosophy and social justice values are examined. The theories are provided.

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Identify some of the features and values you associate with a just society. For example, does it include access to quality education, basic healthcare, and housing? How involved should the national government be with local issues and personal decisions about healthcare and other issues? Is the opportunity for economic equality important regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, and so on?

For a just society therefore, several things would have to exist. Decisions would be made entirely on communitarian, public grounds, never private interests. Each rational person would have a say in developing policy.

Education would be very moral, about trying to mold savages into citizens. Property should be secured, but more or less equalized among people. The agrarian life is the best, far superior to the life of the city or industry. State bureaucracy should be kept at a minimum to ensure the maximum representation of the people, or those who are sovereign.

In short anything that contributes to social unity, equality and civic virtue would have to be promoted by the state. Law exists to remove any concept of hierarchy, whether it be slavery, wealth or power. The law is a moral force, not a mere set of concepts.

The more radical fact is that law and the nature of the community should be transformative: taking egocentric beings and inculcating, though upbringing and education, civic beings who see themselves as part of a larger whole, which is to say, mutually dependent.

Present an account of at least one social/political philosophy from the assigned readings with support from the course texts and online lectures that might achieve the values/features you identify. For example, you might discuss classical theories, social contract theory (including Rawls' veil of ignorance), Marxism, and/or feminist philosophy.

Rousseau's concept of consensus and justice has always appealed to me. Though occasionally accused of being totalitarian, I think JJR is an excellent source for social justice and a means of criticizing existing societies.

First of all, Rousseau holds that the common good is the highest civic end, the summation of all previous virtues. Second, that all societies, in one form or another, are based on some implicit contract. Third, that, before civilization, human beings, men especially, were loners, free and very insecure. Fourth, that any social policy must derive from the general will, or the public interest of the community as a whole. The policy implications here are endless.

It is important to note that the general will is not merely about majority rule or even the agreement of desires among a community. The GW is specifically public, true, ethical and ...

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