PHIL 450D Special Topic: Global Justice

This course will familiarize students with some of the systematic approaches that moral and political philosophers have developed for addressing some of the difficult and practically urgent questions of international ethics and global justice. Such questions may include the following: Are the high levels of poverty and extreme inequalities that characterize our world ethically defensible? If they are not defensible, then who is obliged to do something about them? Should universal environmental standards bind all countries? If so, then who is responsible for ensuring that all countries can meet them at reasonable cost? Are sovereign states outdated artifacts, or should they remain an important mode of political organization?