PH416      One Unit
Philosophy, Morals and Politics

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The course will cover key topics in moral and political philosophy.

The course addresses questions such as the following (indicative examples only; precise content varies from year to year): What sacrifices are we required to make for the sake of others? Does it make a moral difference that a person is less well off than she could have been? Is it permissible to cause harm to others in order to prevent greater harm? Can it benefit or harm people to bring them into existence? Do individual actions make a difference to large-scale problems such as climate change and global inequality? What moral obligations do we have to obey the law? When, and how, can we be justified in resisting injustice? When we tax the rich to give to the poor are we restricting freedom, enhancing it or redistributing it? Can the cultural circumstances in which we grow up absolve us of blame for bad beliefs? Is private property in land justified? Do moral questions have objectively correct answers? Can the members of one culture legitimately criticise the moral norms of another culture? Do states act morally permissibly in excluding would-be immigrants from their territory? What kind of rights, if any, are grounded in the value of culture? How should we rectify historical wrongs?

Topics in other areas of moral and political philosophy may also be covered.

This course will use Cadmus for submitting assessments. This platform is currently being evaluated by LSE for AI-resilient assessment. For more information, visit Cadmus Assessment Edit Tracking - Guidance for Students.

15 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.
15 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

Students will be expected to produce 2 formative essays, one each on AT and WT material.

Thomson, J.J. ‘Self-Defense’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 (1991)

Otsuka, M. ‘Killing the Innocent in Self-Defense’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 23 (1994)

Quinn, W. ‘Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing’, The Philosophical Review 98 (1989)

Øverland, G. ‘Moral Obstacles: An Alternative to the Doctrine of Double Effect’, Ethics 124 (2014)

Parry, J. ‘Defensive Harm, Consent, and Intervention’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 43 (2017)

Geoff Sayre-McCord, 'Metaethics', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Matthew Chrisman, What is this thing called Metaethics?

Michael Smith, The Moral Problem;

J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

Nozick, R. Anarchy, State and Utopia

Locke, J. Second Treatise of Government

Cohen, G. A., 'Nozick on Appropriation', New Left Review, no. 150 (1985)

Jefferson, T., Letter to James Madison (1789)

Boxill, B., 'Black Reparations', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(2015)

Exam (50%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Essay (50%, 2000 words)

This course may require the use of edit tracking software for the summative essay, which would require the essay to be written on a given platform. Training and instruction will be provided.