Justice - ideas and ideals in fiction, philosophy and religion

The pursuit of sustainability is both motivated and guided by concern for justice. On one side, the pursuit of global sustainability is motivated by the recognition that it is unjust to live in a way that deprives others of the chance to flourish. On the other side, the pursuit is guided by our answers to fundamental questions of justice. What opportunities for flourishing does justice demand that we leave for others? What burdens does justice permit us to impose on ourselves in order to preserve these opportunities?

This course will ask how conceptions of justice developed in different literary, philosophical and religious traditions might help to motivate and guide our pursuit of sustainability. The course will have two points of concentration. As a first matter, it will examine contemporary conceptions of justice, and ask how far they are suited to cultivating sustainability. What do our dominant understandings of justice assume about humanity and the non-human world? Do these assumptions help or hinder the pursuit of sustainability?

As a second matter, the course will examine how contemporary conceptions of justice might be enriched through wider literary, philosophical and religious depictions. The course will probe the assumptions that inform the wide-ranging accounts of justice that appear in differing texts and traditions, with particular attention paid to assumptions that create space for ideas like generosity and self-sacrifice to appear as part of a picture of justice.