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lecture2009–present

Justice

Disciplines:
philosophy & ideas

Summary

Harvard's most famous undergraduate course in political philosophy—working through Rawls, Kant, Aristotle, Bentham, and Mill using real contemporary dilemmas as testing grounds.

Core Contribution

Demonstrates that moral philosophy is not academic abstraction but a live engagement with how we actually make collective decisions; made rigorous ethics publicly accessible.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • distributive justice
  • Rawls
  • Aristotle on virtue
  • trolley problems
  • communitarian ethics

Historical Influences

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Kant's Groundwork Bentham and Mill's utilitarianism

Intellectual Lineage

No conceptual lineage found.

Allied Works

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? The Case Against PerfectionWhat Money Can't Buy

Contemporaries & Peers

Yale's Death course MIT OpenCourseWareTED-Ed philosophy content

Minds Influenced

MOOC design and open education movement Civic education curricula globallyPublic philosophy discourse

Intellectual Posterity

Most-watched open course in Harvard's history; model for MOOC design; influenced millions globally in their moral reasoning and civic self-understanding.

Discussing

Justice

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