Fall/Winter Timetable
POL2038H1S L0101
Undergraduate Course Code: POL480H1S L0101
Pluralism, Justice, and Equality
Themes
This course will explore the challenge of reconciling the fact of social difference with the aspiration to equality. In particular, it will examine challenges to liberal conceptions of justice that have been brought from the standpoint of marginalized or oppressed groups. To what extent do such challenges undercut long-standing liberal strategies for coping with pluralism? With these questions in the background, we will focus on the concept of impartiality as integral to the ideal of justice. What are the alternative interpretations of the ideal of impartiality? What should we make of feminist and postmodernist claims about the impossibility of impartiality? Do such claims irreparably damage the liberal ideal of impartiality, or is it retrievable?
Texts
Texts will include works by contemporary theorists such as John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, Jurgen Habermas, Iris Young, Seyla Benhabib, Martha Minow, and Drucilla Cornell.
Format and Requirements
Weekly participation, seminar presentations, and term papers.
November 14, 2023
Congratulations to Madalyn Hay, a recipient of a 2023-2024 Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship. Madalyn, one of our doctoral students, holds a BAH in Contemporary Studies and Classics from the...
August 24, 2023
Congratulations to alumna Meaghan Williams, a recipient of the 2022-23 Governor General’s Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, the highest academic honour available to graduate students in Canada. Awarded annually by the Office of the...
June 14, 2021
Great news from the Canadian Political Science Association, which held its annual awards ceremony (online) over the weekend of June 12 & 13: Professor Stefan Rencken’s book "Private Governance and Public...
April 22, 2021
Congratulations to two political science alumni now teaching at U of T who have both won Superior Teaching Awards! Igor Shoikhedbrod and Khalid Ahmed will be celebrated on May 5th at...
August 6, 2020
Q&A with 2020 Vanier Scholar Yojana Miraya Oscco Congratulations to PhD student Yojana Miraya Oscco who has won a prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC). Launched in 2008, the program enables...
April 30, 2020
Congratulations to our graduate student Kevin Edmonds who has won New College's June Larkin Award for Pedagogical Development. A PhD candidate specializing in Caribbean political economy, histories of alternative/illicit development, foreign intervention and...