These are the lecture notes from all lectures that are relevant for the exam. Including the final lecture which is based on student questions and is given as a final preperation for the exam.
Lecture 1 → Introduction
Main concepts of the course
Solidarity
- Contested concept
- Our willingness to share and cooperate with eachother
- Sociological and philosophical roots
- Shared aims and interests
- Shared life experiences (work, community
- Fraternity
- Community; a willingness to share resources
- A moral grounding of the welfare state
- Solidarity provides the moral grounds for entering in to a welfare state (it justifies
welfare states arrangements)
- Psychological roots → solidarity isn’t really studied in psychology but associated
terms are:
- Cooperation/altruism/prosocial behavior
- Belongingness/affiliation
- Social identity/inclusion & exclusion
Social justice
- Provides the rules through which we can share and cooperate with each other
(solidarity)
- The division of resources and how we do this
- Is studied much more interdisciplinary than solidarity
- Sociological and philosophical roots
- Redistribution of resources
- Division of divide fundamental rights and obligations
- A set of underlying moral principles in society
- Psychological roots
- Distributive fairness
- Procedural fairness
- Self transcending (vs. self-enhancing) value/motive
Do we have self-transcending motives of justice and solidarity or is all
behavior ultimately driven by self-interest?
Homo economicus
- The basic notion is that humans are self-interested
- Rational choice theory
- When people are confronted with a choice they will make a rational choice
(weighing costs and benefits, striving for maximum net benefit)
- Theory of evolution (darwin)
- Natural selection
- It explains how biological functions arise, exist and change over time
- There are hereditary traits → within these traits there is blind variations →
these different variations have different fitness (some are better equipped to
survive in certain environments than others)
*In both of these theories humans are basically self-interested
,- Natural selection favors selfishness
- Due to mutations you Cooperators always have a cost for another individual to
receive a benefit or they share their benefits with someone else, defectors don’t
have these costs because they don’t need to cooperate → so over time according
to natural selection the defectors have a higher probability of surviving
- Rational choice theory favors selfishness
- The prisoner dilemma shows that the rationale choice leads to defecting
- We see in society that there are people who choose to cooperate in these types of
situations (Prosocials individuals, competitors)
- This is one of the pieces of evidence that there are some self-transcending
motives
- Another example is the capuchin monkey experiment (given them grape or
cucumber for a task) → when the other monkey gets grape they throw the cucumber
back
Batson and colleagues
- Altruism is hard wired in human brains → we can distinguish between self-interest
and self-transcending
- In the IO condition there is a higher level of empathy but not of distress, in the IS
condition there is a higher level of empathy but also a higher level of distress →
according to Batson this show that we are able to show empathy without the
motivation of trying to reduce the distress for yourself
- An fMRI showed that there are differences in the brain for the different conditions
→ we are able to see altruism in the brain
What is justice and why is it important?
Rawls: an introduction
- Political-philosophical approach
‘Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought’
- Truth (being able to tell the truth, knowing the truth and trusting that) is key to
systems of thought and theory → As scientists we have to believe that theory is set
out to be truthful
- That is just as basic as justice being the first virtue of social institutions, that we
need justice for society
- Injustice is only ok if it helps to prevent greater in justice
→ A good example is putting people in prison (we do the injustice to the people we
lock up but we are trying to prevent a greater injustice that these people could do if
we don’t lock them up)
- If everyone in society is reasonable (RCT) and if we are willing to act in accordance
with some principle of justice (for example as laid down in laws) then having those
laws in and of itself isn’t enough, we can’t just presume that everyone will act
reasonable according to the laws, we still need to clarify the principles of justice that
govern our society
- This is because with cooperation in society we are usually better off because we
have some common interests but we still have some interest in the greater benefit
that society produces.
- If we see the welfare state that we live in as a piece of pie, then everyone wants a
large piece of the pie. So we have some common interests that tie us together but we
, also have the interest of trying to get a large piece of the pie which causes conflict of
interest
- These two interests together (common interests vs. conflict of interests) is why we
need these principles of justice.
- In rawls → common interests = identity interests
- According to Rawls a just society is possible because of identity of interests → we
are all better of together than as individuals but he also states that conflict is
inevitable because we are self-interested → so we need principles of justice
- Justice requires trust
- We need to trust that principles of justice are widely shared in society and
institutions
- For example: loss of trust because of kindertoeslagenaffaire
Key terms
- Concept (of justice) → abstract idea, notion (a basic or abstract idea of what is
justice)
- Conceptions (of justice) → What we perceive (what do we perceive to be just)
- Principles (of justice) → fundamental truth/foundation for a belief systems (in this
case for society)
- The ‘initial’ or original position → a hypothetical situation (which allows us to
consider the principles of justice)
- Assumes no one knows their place in society
- In this initial position, everyone is equal
- Veil of ignorance
- This ‘intial position’ is key to understanding Rawls’ thought experiment
- Difference principle (versus utility) → Inequality in a society is only acceptable if the
least advantaged benefit
- As long as the situation of the least advantaged improves then it is just if the
situation of some people improves more than the situation of some other people
- Example: during the COVID-19 pandemic Americans received money. If we look
at it with a Rawlsian point of view we could give the least advantaged more
money, this would not be equal because not everyone gets the same amount of
money but this is ok because the situation of the least advantaged people
improves
- According to Rawls if we use this principle everyone will be willing to cooperate,
even the least advantaged people
- Utilitarian view → Based on a principle of utility, that which produces some kind of
utility or benefit or good → according to Rawls the principle of utility is incompatible
with justice because of the initial position: if we don’t know our place in society or
what advantages we have then we simply can’t decide a society on principles of
utility
- Social contract → an implicit agreement among people in society on how to
cooperate (the proverbial pie)
- Justice as fairness → is what Rawls is proposing
Putting it all together
- There are a lot of conceptions of justice → competing of ideas
- In order for a society to work we need to have principles of justice (below the
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