Justice

I have a word blog called Joyful Noiseletter, where I ponder word meanings.  Harvard offered the public an ethics class on "Justice" in 2009, so I posted the word "justice" on my word-blog and an invitation to join the class discussion here on my book-blog.  After watching each week's video posted by Harvard, a group of friends met at my house to talk about it.  You can explore "justice" with us, if you are interested, by answering any of our weekly questions:

1 ~ cannibalism

2 ~ guardrail
3 ~ taxing the rich
4 ~ owning myself
5 ~ selling a kidney
6 ~ cheating a child
7 ~ racial profiling
8 ~ what we deserve
9 ~ ethnicity
10 ~ civic virtue
11 ~ patriotism
12 ~ same-sex marriage

We covered two subjects each week, as I showed in my overview post.

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? ~ by Michael J. Sandel, 2009

What are our obligations to others as people in a free society?  Should government tax the rich to help the poor?  Is the free market fair?  Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth?  Is killing sometimes morally required?  Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality?  Do individual rights and the common good conflict?  Michael J. Sandel’s “Justice” course is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard.