Justice and International Affairs

The course focuses on topics and questions currently at the centre of the philosophical debate on global justice. On the one hand, the course aims at familiarizing students with the basic notions and concepts crucial to make sense of questions of distributive justice as well as with the major conceptions of justice developed for the domestic level. On the other hand, the course intends to offer clues for appreciating the peculiarity of the global domain, the specific challenges connected to extending requirements of justice beyond domestic contexts, and the key arguments for and against such an extension.

Knowledge and understanding: Students are expected to acquire a clear understanding about the key notions and concepts employed in the philosophical debate concerning distributive justice. Students are also expected to acquire in-depth knowledge concerning the major approaches to distributive justice developed for the domestic domain and to understand their assumptions and their implications for the debate on global justice. Moreover, students are expected to gain familiarity with the peculiarity of the global domain, with the challenges connected to extending requirements of justice beyond domestic contexts and with arguments for and against such an extension.
Applying knowledge and understanding: At the end of the course, students are expected to be able to apply their acquired knowledge and competences in the field of distributive justice and global justice to issues animating public debates. To this end, the course offers several occasions for in-depth class discussion, which will provide a suitable space for debating the relevance and import of the philosophical notions and approaches under examination with respect to more concrete issues and questions. Moreover, the course focuses on topics currently at the centre of public debate - such as migration and climate change - that are precisely meant to increase students' understanding about how to use abstract and general philosophical arguments to tackle more specific problems.
Making judgements: Thanks to the structure of the course and the selected readings, students are expected to increase their propensity for autonomous judgment. To this end, students will be required to read and examine essays providing opposing arguments (e.g. one essay for and one essay against a certain conception of justice) or essays endorsing different theoretical and methodological approaches. Students will be therefore introduced to a plurality of perspectives and this is expected to improve their capacity to adjudicate among conflicting arguments by autonomously assessing their relative merits and limits. Moreover, the bulk of the course will consist in the analysis of philosophical arguments - of their premises and their internal structure - and students will be required to critically examine the arguments at stake, thus further enhancing their capacity to autonomously judge their validity.
Communication: Students are expected to acquire familiarity with the argumentative strategies endorse in philosophical debates, which offer insights on how to elaborate consistent arguments or proposals and on how to effectively defend them and which are therefore functional to improve students' communication skills by. Moreover, students will be required to summarize and discuss complex arguments in a clear and effective way both orally - through in-class presentations - and in written form, thus having a further opportunity to strengthen their communication skills. For attendant students, similar skills are expected to be enhanced also through class discussions, which are meant to provide students with the opportunity to improve their argumentative capacities by engaging with arguments proposed by their classmates.