Poverty and Social Justice – Philosophical Foundations

Jan Rehmann

The course explores philosophical foundations of social justice, both ancient and modern, and continually relates them to current debates.  It confronts Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics with critical impulses from Christian Ethics and compares “utilitarian” approaches with Kant’s moral philosophy.  It looks at socialist contributions to social rights and reconstructs some of the controversies around John Rawls’ theory of justice.  The main attention lies on poverty and its intertwinings with racial and gender injustice.