Fall 2013/Pasadena
ET848/548
Stassen
ET848/548: PHILOSOPHY OF JUSTICE. Glen Stassen.
DESCRIPTION: This doctoral seminar is open to a very limited number of master’s students. We shall confront some constraints and constructive directions suggested by a postmodernist and communitarian criticism of Enlightenment influences on modern ethics. We shall analyze Michael Walzer’s argument for how to make ethical arguments in the postmodern context, and analyze how he compares with other approaches. We shall seek to develop a constructive, historically situated understanding of justice that gives concrete guidance to community-formation and to the presently changing global economic environment and its impact on local communities.
SIGNIFICANCE FOR LIFE AND MINISTRY: Church members and outsiders East and West are anxious about the impact of the global economy on their lives and on the future. Love, justice, and community are central to biblical faith, and are pivotal to ministry to the lives of persons inside and outside the church. But in the modern cultural context, they have been either neglected, rendered vague and abstract, or set on a base that no longer holds. Churches without a strong understanding of justice are being infiltrated by unfaithful ideologies.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: (1) Develop a normative biblical understanding of justice from Christopher Marshall’s Beyond Retribution and other readings that I will suggest. (2) Assess several understandings of the meaning of justice in the readings, with extra emphasis on the philosophy of Michael Walzer. (3) Analyze how these understandings of justice are influenced by the authors’ assumptions on some of the variables in the holistic character ethics model.
COURSE FORMAT: The seminar will meet weekly for three-hour sessions. Seminar discussions, in which we help each other understand, analyze, compare, and assess different understandings of love and justice in community.
REQUIRED READING:
An Na'im, Abdullahi. Towards an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights and International Law. Syracuse University, 1996. ISBN: 978-0815627067, Pub. Price $19.95 [253 pp.].
Hauerwas, Stanley. After Christendom: How the Church is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas. Abingdon, 1991. ISBN: 978-0687009299, Pub. Price $21.00 [200 pp.].
Lebacqz, Karen. Six Theories of Justice. Augsburg Fortress, 1987. ISBN: 978-0806622453, Pub. Price $16.95 [160 pp.].
Marshall, Christopher. Beyond Retribution. Eerdmans, 2001. ISBN: 978-0802847973, Pub. Price $30.00 [352 pp.].
Sandel, Michael J. Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. ISBN: 978-0374532505, Pub. Price $15.00 [320 pp.].
Walzer, Michael. Interpretation and Social Criticism. Harvard University Press, 1987. ISBN: 978-0674459717, Pub. Price. $24.50 [108 pp.].
_________. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. Basic Books, 1984. ISBN: 978-0465081899, Pub. Price $26.00 [364 pp.].
_________. Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1994. ISBN: 978-0268018979, Pub. Price $15.00 [120 pp.].
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Princeton University, 2010. ISBN: 978-0691146300, Pub. Price $28.95 [416 pp.].
Selected essays on reserve or Moodle.
ASSIGNMENTS AND ASSESSMENT:
Attend all seminar sessions prepared to analyze the readings of the day. [20% of the grade].
Five brief reflection papers, 3 or 4 pages single space. [40% of the grade].
A term paper that compares the understanding of the writer you choose with Walzer’s understanding of justice. [40% of the grade]. (At the 500 level, five brief reflection papers; no term paper, count 80% of the grade).
PREREQUISITES: For master’s students: one prior course each in Christian ethics, theology, and Christian philosophy.
RELATIONSHIP TO CURRICULUM: Elective for masters students.
FINAL EXAMINATION: None.