《正义：如何做是对的》课堂笔记Harvard-Justice

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
Question raised
1 Do we have certain fundamental rights?
2 Does a fair procedure justify any results?
3 What is the moral work of consent?
Utilitarianism
The greatest good for the greatest number
Jeremy Bentham
The highest principle of morality, whether personal or political, is to maximize the general welfare, or the collective happiness, or the overall balance of pleasure over pain, in a phrase, maximize Utility.
Objections to Utilitarianism
1 Failed to respect individual / minority rights
2 Not possible to aggregate all values and preferences into $$
John Stuart Mill
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question.
Libertarianism
We belong to ourselves. We own ourselves.
Precisely because we are separately individual beings, we are not available to any use that the society may desire. The fundamental individual right is the right of liberty, the right to choose freely, to live our lives as we please provided we respect other people’s rights to do the same.
The libertarian view of government
1 No paternalist legislation
2 No morals legislation
3 No redistribution of income from rich to poor
Robert Nozick’s argument against taxation
Taxation = taking of earnings
Taking of earnings = forced labor
Forced labor = slavery
Violates principles of Self-Possession
Objections to Libertarianism
1 The poor need the money more
2 Taxation by consent of the governed is not coerced
3 The successful owe a debt to society
4 Wealth depends partly on luck so it isn’t deserv ed。