BCL/MJUR CLASS HT 2022
Political Philosophy – Value, Justice, and Humankind’s Common Heritage
Wednesdays, 3-5, Hovenden Room, All Souls College. (If Government/University guidance change, the class will be held online.)
Topic. We will address, in broad terms, the question of whether there are such things as cultural goods (i.e.: cathedrals, paintings, manmade landscapes) which (a) have universal value and (b) whose preservation imposes stringent moral duties of justice on all of us, irrespective of where those goods are located. You all come from different countries. To fix your mind, have a look at the World Heritage List and see whether your country has major landmarks or buildings. By focusing on this specific topic, we will approach some fundamental issues in moral and political philosophy. There is some overlap between this module and what you covered in your class with Ruth Chang, which should be helpful.
Preparing for the class. Students will be required to do all articles listed each week under Core Readings, unless stipulated otherwise. As a rule of thumb, you should allocate half a day per week to do the core readings: 2.5 hrs to read the two or three assigned articles, and 1 hr or so to think about the issues, write up your notes, etc. The readings should be used as bases for formulating and defending your own views about the issues and arguments at hand. Supplementary readings are meant to help you explore the issues further, be it for classes or for writing essays.
It is possible that, as you go through the readings, you will be left wondering why I assigned these for this or that topic. My aim is to encourage you to flex your philosophical muscles, by getting you to draw connections, which might not be obvious at first, between the issue under discussion and the readings on offer.
Other good resources include: the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and the International Encyclopaedia of Ethics (available online from the Bodleian). However, be careful not to merely rehash the entries. Don’t dispense with actually reading the primary sources, when you write essays. The SEP should be used as a roadmap, not as a substitute for proper philosophical work. For good podcasts, see Philosophy Bites, and Political Philosophy Podcasts, which together have over three hundreds of interviews with philosophers on a huge range of topics. Be aware that audio content is subject to plagiarism rules, so do not cite an interviewee without properly referencing the podcast.
The class. There will be no presentation. I will spend the first 5mns or so introducing the issues. The class will very much be a discussion, and not a sequence of one-on-one interactions between one of you and me. Roughly half way through, I will summarise where the discussion has got to – or, indeed, I may well invite one of you to do this. If and when one of you asks me a question, I will more likely than not ask, first, the rest of you whether they have some thoughts about the question. My classes are thus very much run along the lines of:
‘It’s not you against me in relation to the philosophical problem. It’s you and me together against the problem.’ (Jane Heal, Cambridge philosopher, in private correspondence. Brilliant scholar of Wittgenstein/philosophy of language.)
In other words: there are no stupid questions; there is no shame in conceding that one was wrong on a particular point, or in admitting that one doesn’t understand a point or reading; and intellectual showing off is actively discouraged.
Finally: I also discourage the use of laptops or tablets to take notes during my classes, unless of course you have a health-related reason for using them. (I will not ask or check.) The reason is quite simple: from experience, if we have a screen to look at and a keyboard to type on, we are less likely to make eye contact, and less likely to have a lively discussion.
Tutorial essays. You will each need to write an essay of max. 1250 words based on material in this seminar series. Your tutorial essay is due by noon on Friday, 7th week, March 4, 2022. Each of you will have a tutorial partner, and you should send your essay in Word or PDF document (single spaced and numbered pages, please) to me at [email protected], and to your tutorial partner by the deadline. Tutorial partners should be ready to provide oral comments on their partner’s paper, but it is unlikely that we will be able to discuss all papers during our tutorial session.
The topics for tutorial essays are:
Either:
In his will, the novelist Franz Kafka instructed his friend and executor Max Brod to burn all of his unpublished material after his death. Max Brod did not honor Kafka’s wishes. As a result, we can now read novels such as The Trial and The Castle – now widely regarded as masterpieces of world literature. Did Brod commit a wrong?
Or:
Are countries under a moral duty to return looted artworks to their place of origin?
We will discuss those essays (on which I will have written feedback) at our last class, Wednesday of week 8.
Tutorial pairs are:
Angelo - Megan
Omer - Tara
Zohra - Cécile
Lorena - David
IF YOU ARE NEW TO CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
The following books will help you make sense of the discipline:
W. Kymlicka, Contem porary Political Philosophy, 2nd edition (Blackwell, 2002). The book goes through some of the major ‘schools of thought’ in contemporary analytical political philosophy (liberalism, communitarianism, multiculturalism, libertarianism, feminism).
A. Swift, Political Philosophy: A Beginner’s Guide for Students and Politicians, 3rd edition (Polity, 2013). The book is organised around concepts (justice, liberty, democracy, etc.).
J. Wolff, Introduction to Political Philosophy, 3rd edition (Oxford, 2015). Similar to Swift’s in its approach, though it has more about the state and the justification for authority.
For good advice on how to write in philosophy in general, and political philosophy in particular, you might want to read chapters 2–3 in A. Blau (ed) Methods in Analytical Political Theory (Cambridge, 2017).
SYLLABUS
As of 5/12/2021, all the core readings are available online via the Bodleian. The further readings are available either online, or in hard copy, or both.
Week 1 Valuing Heritage
Key question(s): Are there such a thing as universal values? What confers value, if anything at all, on that heritage?
Core readings
One of:
And:
Raz, Joseph. Value, Respect, and Attachment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Ch. 2.
Further readings
Anderson, Elizabeth. Value in Ethics and Economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Bicknell, Jeannette, Judkins, Jennifer and Korsmeyer, Carolyn (eds.) Philosophical Perspectives on Ruins, Monuments and Memorials. London: Routledge, 2019.
Baslar, Kemal. The Concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind in International Law. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1998.
Chisholm, Roderick. "Defining Intrinsic Value." Analysis 41, no. 2 (1981): 99-100.
Gillman, Derek. The Idea of Cultural Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Grau, Christopher. "Irreplaceability and Unique Value." Philosophical Topics 32 (2004): 111-29.
Kagan, Shelly. "Rethinking Intrinsic Value." The Journal of Ethics 2, no. 4 (1998): 277-97.
Korsmeyer, Carolyn. Things - in Touch with the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Labadi, Sophia. UNESCO, Cultural Heritage, and Outstanding Universal Value. Rowman & Littlefield, 2013.
Langton, Rae. "Objective and Unconditioned Value." The Philosophical Review 116, no. 2 (2007): 157-85.
Meskell, Lynn. A Future in Ruins - UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Dream of Peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Omland, Atle. "The Ethics of the World Heritage Concept." In C. Scarre (ed.) The Ethics of Archaeology: Philosophical Perspectives on Archaeological Practice. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
O'Neill, John. "The Varieties of Intrinsic Value." The Monist 75, no. 2 (1992 1992): 119-37.
Quinn, Warren S. "Theories of Intrinsic Value." American Philosophical Quarterly 11, no. 2 (1974): 123-32.
Scheffler, Samuel. "Valuing." In Samuel Freeman and Rahul Kumar (eds.) Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T.M. Scanlon. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Wallace, R. J. (ed.) Joseph Raz - the Practice of Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Zimmerman, Michael J. "In Defense of the Concept of Intrinsic Value." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29, no. 3 (1999): 389-409.
———. "Partiality and Intrinsic Value." Mind 120 (2011): 447-83.
Week 2 Justice
Key question(s): what do we owe to each other as a matter of justice? Are national/political borders relevant to our rights and duties?
Core readings
At least two and preferably three of:
Goodin, R. E. "What Is So Special About Our Fellow Countrymen?". Ethics 98 (1988): 663-86.
Blake, Michael. "Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy." Philosophy & Public Affairs 30, no. 1 (2001): 257-96.
Singer, Peter. "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229-43.
Further readings
Brock, Gillian. Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Caney, Simon. Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Jones, Charles. Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Miller, David. "Justice and Global Inequality." In Inequality, Globalization and World Politics, edited by Andrew Hurrell and Ngaire Woods. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
———. National Responsibility and Global Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Nagel, Thomas. "The Problem of Global Justice." Philosophy & Public Affairs 33, no. 2 (2005): 113-47.
Risse, Mathias. On Global Justice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Sangiovanni, Andrea. "Global Justice, Reciprocity and the State." Philosophy & Public Affairs 35, no. 1 (2007): 3-39.
Week 3 Heritage and justice:
Key question(s): What do we owe to one another in respect of cultural heritage? Not to destroy it? To preserve it? To grant access to it? Do we owe it to the dead? To future generations?
Note: there are very few readings directly about this issue, if any. (Which, in a way, is partly the point of this particular class.) The challenge for you, then, is to work out (a) what your preferred theory of justice is, (b) what follows from it in respect of cultural heritage.
Core readings
Harding, Sarah. "Value, Obligation, and Cultural Heritage." Arizona State Law Review 31 (1999): 291-354.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven. "Capabilities and Human Rights." Fordham Law Review 66 (1997): 273-300.
Further readings
Callahan, Joan C. "On Harming the Dead." Ethics 97 (1987): 341-52.
Gosseries, Axel and Meyer, Lukas H. (eds.). Intergenerational justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Ridge, Michael. "Giving the Dead Their Due." Ethics 114, no. 1 (2003): 38-59.
Stemplowska, Zofia. "Duties to the Dead." In Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy - Vol. 6, edited by David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne and Steven Wall. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Week 4 Heritage and private property rights.
Key question(s): Suppose I own the last painting in existence by, say, Rembrandt. Am I morally entitled to burn it for fun? Or, suppose that Rembrandt himself had wanted to burn every single one of his paintings before his death. Would he have been morally entitled to do so?
Core readings
Thompson, J. (2004). "Art, Property Rights and the Interests of Humanity." Journal of Value Inquiry 38 (4): 545-560.
Young, James O. "Destroying Works of Art." Journal Of Aesthetics And Art Criticism 47, no. 4 (1989): 367-73.
Further readings
Lever, Annabelle (ed.) New Frontiers in the Philosophy of Intellectual Property. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Sax, Joseph L. Playing with a Rembrandt - Public and Private Rights in Cultural Treasures. Ann Harbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999.
Sonderholm, Jorn. "Ethical Issues Surrounding Intellectual Property Rights." In Lever (ed.) New Frontiers in the Philosophy of Intellectual Property.
Strahilevitz, Lior Jacob. "The Right to Destroy." The Yale Law Journal 114, no. 4 (2005): 781-854.
Waldron, Jeremy. The Right to Private Property. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Wilson, James. "Could There Be a Right to Own Intellectual Property?". Law and Philosophy 28, no. 4 (2009): 393-427.
Week 5 Heritage and territorial rights.
Key question(s): Cultural goods are located on countries’ territories. If one accepts that a political community has territorial rights, why can’t it decide what to do with those cultural goods? Ex: what if anything would be wrong with the Italian people letting Venice sink into the sea?
Core readings
Stilz, Anna. "Nations, States, and Territory." Ethics 121, no. 3 (2011): 572-601.
Miller, David. "Territorial Rights: Concept and Justification." Political Studies 60, no. 2 (2012): 252-68.
Further readings
Fabre, Cécile. "Territorial Sovereignty and Humankind's Common Heritage." Journal of Social Philosophy 52, no. 1 (2021): 17-23.
Kolers, Avery. Land, Conflict, and Justice - a Political Theory of Territory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Meisels, Tamar. Territorial Rights. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005.
Moore, Margaret. A Political Theory of Territory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Simmons, A. John. "On the Territorial Rights of States." Philosophical Issues 11 (2001): 300-26.
Steiner, Hillel. "Territorial Justice." In National Rights, International Obligations, edited by Simon Caney, David George and Peter Jones, 139-48. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1996.
Stilz, Anna. Territorial Sovereignty - a Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Week 6 The problem of cultural appropriation.
Key question(s): This goes back on the universal v. the particular. Here, we will discuss the return of cultural artefacts to the countries and communities from which they were taken. In particular: is there a duty to return objects and artefacts taken away from their place of origin? Does it matter how long ago they were taken, etc?
Core readings
Thompson, Janna. "Cultural Property, Restitution and Value." Journal of Applied Philosophy 20, no. 3 (2003): 251-62.
Matthes, Erich Hatala. "Cultural Appropriation without Essentialism?". Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 2 (2019): 343-66.
Further readings
Butt, Daniel. Rectifying International Injustice - Principles of Compensation and Restitution between Nations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Fabre, Cécile. Cosmopolitan Peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Ch. 6.
Greenfield, Jeannette. The Return of Cultural Treasures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Matthes, Erich Hatala. "Cultural Appropriation and Oppression." Philosophical Studies 176, no. 4 (2019): 1003-13.
Week 7 Saving lives v. saving stones
Key questions: are we morally justified in giving priority to heritage over human lives, or vice-versa?
Core readings
Matthes, Erich Hatala. "`Saving Lives or Saving Stones'? The Ethics of Cultural Heritage Protection in War." Public Affairs Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2018): 67-84.
Further readings
Tadros, Victor. "Localized Restricted Aggregation." In Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy - Vol. 5, edited by David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne and Steven Wall. Oxford, 2019.
Tomlin, Patrick. "On Limited Aggregation." Philosophy & Public Affairs 45, no. 3 (2017): 232-60.
Voorhoeve, Alex. "How Should We Aggregate Competing Claims?". Ethics 125, no. 1 (2014): 64-87.
Week 8 ‘Tutorial week’. In week 8, we will discuss, constructively, your tutorial essays.
Political Philosophy – Value, Justice, and Humankind’s Common Heritage
Wednesdays, 3-5, Hovenden Room, All Souls College. (If Government/University guidance change, the class will be held online.)
Topic. We will address, in broad terms, the question of whether there are such things as cultural goods (i.e.: cathedrals, paintings, manmade landscapes) which (a) have universal value and (b) whose preservation imposes stringent moral duties of justice on all of us, irrespective of where those goods are located. You all come from different countries. To fix your mind, have a look at the World Heritage List and see whether your country has major landmarks or buildings. By focusing on this specific topic, we will approach some fundamental issues in moral and political philosophy. There is some overlap between this module and what you covered in your class with Ruth Chang, which should be helpful.
Preparing for the class. Students will be required to do all articles listed each week under Core Readings, unless stipulated otherwise. As a rule of thumb, you should allocate half a day per week to do the core readings: 2.5 hrs to read the two or three assigned articles, and 1 hr or so to think about the issues, write up your notes, etc. The readings should be used as bases for formulating and defending your own views about the issues and arguments at hand. Supplementary readings are meant to help you explore the issues further, be it for classes or for writing essays.
It is possible that, as you go through the readings, you will be left wondering why I assigned these for this or that topic. My aim is to encourage you to flex your philosophical muscles, by getting you to draw connections, which might not be obvious at first, between the issue under discussion and the readings on offer.
Other good resources include: the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and the International Encyclopaedia of Ethics (available online from the Bodleian). However, be careful not to merely rehash the entries. Don’t dispense with actually reading the primary sources, when you write essays. The SEP should be used as a roadmap, not as a substitute for proper philosophical work. For good podcasts, see Philosophy Bites, and Political Philosophy Podcasts, which together have over three hundreds of interviews with philosophers on a huge range of topics. Be aware that audio content is subject to plagiarism rules, so do not cite an interviewee without properly referencing the podcast.
The class. There will be no presentation. I will spend the first 5mns or so introducing the issues. The class will very much be a discussion, and not a sequence of one-on-one interactions between one of you and me. Roughly half way through, I will summarise where the discussion has got to – or, indeed, I may well invite one of you to do this. If and when one of you asks me a question, I will more likely than not ask, first, the rest of you whether they have some thoughts about the question. My classes are thus very much run along the lines of:
‘It’s not you against me in relation to the philosophical problem. It’s you and me together against the problem.’ (Jane Heal, Cambridge philosopher, in private correspondence. Brilliant scholar of Wittgenstein/philosophy of language.)
In other words: there are no stupid questions; there is no shame in conceding that one was wrong on a particular point, or in admitting that one doesn’t understand a point or reading; and intellectual showing off is actively discouraged.
Finally: I also discourage the use of laptops or tablets to take notes during my classes, unless of course you have a health-related reason for using them. (I will not ask or check.) The reason is quite simple: from experience, if we have a screen to look at and a keyboard to type on, we are less likely to make eye contact, and less likely to have a lively discussion.
Tutorial essays. You will each need to write an essay of max. 1250 words based on material in this seminar series. Your tutorial essay is due by noon on Friday, 7th week, March 4, 2022. Each of you will have a tutorial partner, and you should send your essay in Word or PDF document (single spaced and numbered pages, please) to me at [email protected], and to your tutorial partner by the deadline. Tutorial partners should be ready to provide oral comments on their partner’s paper, but it is unlikely that we will be able to discuss all papers during our tutorial session.
The topics for tutorial essays are:
Either:
In his will, the novelist Franz Kafka instructed his friend and executor Max Brod to burn all of his unpublished material after his death. Max Brod did not honor Kafka’s wishes. As a result, we can now read novels such as The Trial and The Castle – now widely regarded as masterpieces of world literature. Did Brod commit a wrong?
Or:
Are countries under a moral duty to return looted artworks to their place of origin?
We will discuss those essays (on which I will have written feedback) at our last class, Wednesday of week 8.
Tutorial pairs are:
Angelo - Megan
Omer - Tara
Zohra - Cécile
Lorena - David
IF YOU ARE NEW TO CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
The following books will help you make sense of the discipline:
W. Kymlicka, Contem porary Political Philosophy, 2nd edition (Blackwell, 2002). The book goes through some of the major ‘schools of thought’ in contemporary analytical political philosophy (liberalism, communitarianism, multiculturalism, libertarianism, feminism).
A. Swift, Political Philosophy: A Beginner’s Guide for Students and Politicians, 3rd edition (Polity, 2013). The book is organised around concepts (justice, liberty, democracy, etc.).
J. Wolff, Introduction to Political Philosophy, 3rd edition (Oxford, 2015). Similar to Swift’s in its approach, though it has more about the state and the justification for authority.
For good advice on how to write in philosophy in general, and political philosophy in particular, you might want to read chapters 2–3 in A. Blau (ed) Methods in Analytical Political Theory (Cambridge, 2017).
SYLLABUS
As of 5/12/2021, all the core readings are available online via the Bodleian. The further readings are available either online, or in hard copy, or both.
Week 1 Valuing Heritage
Key question(s): Are there such a thing as universal values? What confers value, if anything at all, on that heritage?
Core readings
One of:
- Matthes, Erich Hatala. "History, Value, and Irreplaceability." Ethics 124, no. 1 (2013): 35-64.
And:
Raz, Joseph. Value, Respect, and Attachment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Ch. 2.
Further readings
Anderson, Elizabeth. Value in Ethics and Economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Bicknell, Jeannette, Judkins, Jennifer and Korsmeyer, Carolyn (eds.) Philosophical Perspectives on Ruins, Monuments and Memorials. London: Routledge, 2019.
Baslar, Kemal. The Concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind in International Law. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1998.
Chisholm, Roderick. "Defining Intrinsic Value." Analysis 41, no. 2 (1981): 99-100.
Gillman, Derek. The Idea of Cultural Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Grau, Christopher. "Irreplaceability and Unique Value." Philosophical Topics 32 (2004): 111-29.
Kagan, Shelly. "Rethinking Intrinsic Value." The Journal of Ethics 2, no. 4 (1998): 277-97.
Korsmeyer, Carolyn. Things - in Touch with the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Labadi, Sophia. UNESCO, Cultural Heritage, and Outstanding Universal Value. Rowman & Littlefield, 2013.
Langton, Rae. "Objective and Unconditioned Value." The Philosophical Review 116, no. 2 (2007): 157-85.
Meskell, Lynn. A Future in Ruins - UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Dream of Peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Omland, Atle. "The Ethics of the World Heritage Concept." In C. Scarre (ed.) The Ethics of Archaeology: Philosophical Perspectives on Archaeological Practice. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
O'Neill, John. "The Varieties of Intrinsic Value." The Monist 75, no. 2 (1992 1992): 119-37.
Quinn, Warren S. "Theories of Intrinsic Value." American Philosophical Quarterly 11, no. 2 (1974): 123-32.
Scheffler, Samuel. "Valuing." In Samuel Freeman and Rahul Kumar (eds.) Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T.M. Scanlon. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Wallace, R. J. (ed.) Joseph Raz - the Practice of Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Zimmerman, Michael J. "In Defense of the Concept of Intrinsic Value." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29, no. 3 (1999): 389-409.
———. "Partiality and Intrinsic Value." Mind 120 (2011): 447-83.
Week 2 Justice
Key question(s): what do we owe to each other as a matter of justice? Are national/political borders relevant to our rights and duties?
Core readings
At least two and preferably three of:
Goodin, R. E. "What Is So Special About Our Fellow Countrymen?". Ethics 98 (1988): 663-86.
Blake, Michael. "Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy." Philosophy & Public Affairs 30, no. 1 (2001): 257-96.
Singer, Peter. "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229-43.
Further readings
Brock, Gillian. Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Caney, Simon. Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Jones, Charles. Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Miller, David. "Justice and Global Inequality." In Inequality, Globalization and World Politics, edited by Andrew Hurrell and Ngaire Woods. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
———. National Responsibility and Global Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Nagel, Thomas. "The Problem of Global Justice." Philosophy & Public Affairs 33, no. 2 (2005): 113-47.
Risse, Mathias. On Global Justice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Sangiovanni, Andrea. "Global Justice, Reciprocity and the State." Philosophy & Public Affairs 35, no. 1 (2007): 3-39.
Week 3 Heritage and justice:
Key question(s): What do we owe to one another in respect of cultural heritage? Not to destroy it? To preserve it? To grant access to it? Do we owe it to the dead? To future generations?
Note: there are very few readings directly about this issue, if any. (Which, in a way, is partly the point of this particular class.) The challenge for you, then, is to work out (a) what your preferred theory of justice is, (b) what follows from it in respect of cultural heritage.
Core readings
Harding, Sarah. "Value, Obligation, and Cultural Heritage." Arizona State Law Review 31 (1999): 291-354.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven. "Capabilities and Human Rights." Fordham Law Review 66 (1997): 273-300.
Further readings
Callahan, Joan C. "On Harming the Dead." Ethics 97 (1987): 341-52.
Gosseries, Axel and Meyer, Lukas H. (eds.). Intergenerational justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Ridge, Michael. "Giving the Dead Their Due." Ethics 114, no. 1 (2003): 38-59.
Stemplowska, Zofia. "Duties to the Dead." In Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy - Vol. 6, edited by David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne and Steven Wall. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Week 4 Heritage and private property rights.
Key question(s): Suppose I own the last painting in existence by, say, Rembrandt. Am I morally entitled to burn it for fun? Or, suppose that Rembrandt himself had wanted to burn every single one of his paintings before his death. Would he have been morally entitled to do so?
Core readings
Thompson, J. (2004). "Art, Property Rights and the Interests of Humanity." Journal of Value Inquiry 38 (4): 545-560.
Young, James O. "Destroying Works of Art." Journal Of Aesthetics And Art Criticism 47, no. 4 (1989): 367-73.
Further readings
Lever, Annabelle (ed.) New Frontiers in the Philosophy of Intellectual Property. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Sax, Joseph L. Playing with a Rembrandt - Public and Private Rights in Cultural Treasures. Ann Harbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999.
Sonderholm, Jorn. "Ethical Issues Surrounding Intellectual Property Rights." In Lever (ed.) New Frontiers in the Philosophy of Intellectual Property.
Strahilevitz, Lior Jacob. "The Right to Destroy." The Yale Law Journal 114, no. 4 (2005): 781-854.
Waldron, Jeremy. The Right to Private Property. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Wilson, James. "Could There Be a Right to Own Intellectual Property?". Law and Philosophy 28, no. 4 (2009): 393-427.
Week 5 Heritage and territorial rights.
Key question(s): Cultural goods are located on countries’ territories. If one accepts that a political community has territorial rights, why can’t it decide what to do with those cultural goods? Ex: what if anything would be wrong with the Italian people letting Venice sink into the sea?
Core readings
Stilz, Anna. "Nations, States, and Territory." Ethics 121, no. 3 (2011): 572-601.
Miller, David. "Territorial Rights: Concept and Justification." Political Studies 60, no. 2 (2012): 252-68.
Further readings
Fabre, Cécile. "Territorial Sovereignty and Humankind's Common Heritage." Journal of Social Philosophy 52, no. 1 (2021): 17-23.
Kolers, Avery. Land, Conflict, and Justice - a Political Theory of Territory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Meisels, Tamar. Territorial Rights. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005.
Moore, Margaret. A Political Theory of Territory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Simmons, A. John. "On the Territorial Rights of States." Philosophical Issues 11 (2001): 300-26.
Steiner, Hillel. "Territorial Justice." In National Rights, International Obligations, edited by Simon Caney, David George and Peter Jones, 139-48. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1996.
Stilz, Anna. Territorial Sovereignty - a Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Week 6 The problem of cultural appropriation.
Key question(s): This goes back on the universal v. the particular. Here, we will discuss the return of cultural artefacts to the countries and communities from which they were taken. In particular: is there a duty to return objects and artefacts taken away from their place of origin? Does it matter how long ago they were taken, etc?
Core readings
Thompson, Janna. "Cultural Property, Restitution and Value." Journal of Applied Philosophy 20, no. 3 (2003): 251-62.
Matthes, Erich Hatala. "Cultural Appropriation without Essentialism?". Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 2 (2019): 343-66.
Further readings
Butt, Daniel. Rectifying International Injustice - Principles of Compensation and Restitution between Nations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Fabre, Cécile. Cosmopolitan Peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Ch. 6.
Greenfield, Jeannette. The Return of Cultural Treasures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Matthes, Erich Hatala. "Cultural Appropriation and Oppression." Philosophical Studies 176, no. 4 (2019): 1003-13.
Week 7 Saving lives v. saving stones
Key questions: are we morally justified in giving priority to heritage over human lives, or vice-versa?
Core readings
Matthes, Erich Hatala. "`Saving Lives or Saving Stones'? The Ethics of Cultural Heritage Protection in War." Public Affairs Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2018): 67-84.
Further readings
Tadros, Victor. "Localized Restricted Aggregation." In Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy - Vol. 5, edited by David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne and Steven Wall. Oxford, 2019.
Tomlin, Patrick. "On Limited Aggregation." Philosophy & Public Affairs 45, no. 3 (2017): 232-60.
Voorhoeve, Alex. "How Should We Aggregate Competing Claims?". Ethics 125, no. 1 (2014): 64-87.
Week 8 ‘Tutorial week’. In week 8, we will discuss, constructively, your tutorial essays.