Week 4 — Political Theory & Philosophy

Why this matters

A public-health student weighing a rule that limits one person to protect others and a business major arguing about how a company should split its profits both argue about justice, liberty, and equality.

In plain language

This week is about the words people fight over when a rule asks some of them to give something up. Justice (giving each person what they are due) means different things to different people, and so do liberty (being free) and equality (counting the same). You will split liberty into two kinds, ask equality three questions, and read John Stuart Mill's famous rule from 1859 about when a government may limit an adult, word for word. Then you will meet two big theories of a fair society, one from John Rawls and one from Robert Nozick, and you will learn to take any value argument apart into its claim, its premises, and its hidden assumptions. You will not be told which side is right; you will be shown how to argue well.

• Already covered: Week 1 gave you empirical versus normative claims and argument analysis; Week 3 sorted the ideologies.
• This week: justice, liberty, equality, rights, Mill's harm principle, Rawls and Nozick, and taking a value argument apart.
• How they connect: the ideologies disagree about exactly these words.
• Where we're going next: Week 5, Forms of Government & Regime Types.

Focus

When a rule asks some people to give something up, what do justice, liberty, and equality ask of us?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] sort a case as negative or positive liberty
• [ ] apply Mill's harm principle, in its exact words, to a new case
• [ ] state Rawls's and Nozick's views without swapping them
• [ ] label each premise of a value argument as empirical or normative

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 4 (45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Do the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and practice set (20 minutes).
3. Do the Political Analysis Workshop (90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: apply Mill's two sentences to one new rule and say whether the reason is permitted or ruled out.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early.

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