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2025-2026 Academic Year

Fall 2025

PHIL 180 Political Philosophy
Cross-listed with POSC 180-01.

POSC 180 Political Philosophy
Cross-listed with PHIL 180-01.

POSC 202 Recent Political Thought
Cross-listed with PHIL 280-01.

POSC 208 Justice in World Politics
Cross-listed with PHIL 285-01.

PHIL 280 Recent Political Thought
Cross-listed with POSC 202-01.

PHIL 285 Justice in World Politics
Cross-listed with POSC 208-01.

Spring 2026

PHIL 180 Political Philosophy
Cross-listed with POSC 180-02.

POSC 180 Political Philosophy
Cross-listed with PHIL 180-02.

POSC 390 War and Justice
Cross-listed with LAWP 400-01. "All's fair in love and war," goes the common saying, suggesting that standards of justice or morality are inapplicable to military conflict, which is a realm of survival in which anything goes. Others hold that no war can possibly be just, at least in the contemporary era in which weapons of mass destruction mean that wars wreak a human and environmental impact that cannot possibly be sustainable or legitimate. In this class, we consider both these approaches - realism and pacifism, respectively - and juxtapose them to the just-war tradition, which holds that defensive and limited wars may be justified so long as they follow certain moral guidelines such as proportionality and non-combatant immunity. We will consider when it might be just to go to war, how just wars must be waged, and what, if anything, justice after war consists in. We will approach these questions using both the laws of war and philosophical works about war. We will consider military conflicts from across the globe, including the World Wars, Vietnam, Rwanda, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and more, and from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to the present day. We will consider topics such as humanitarian intervention and the protection of human rights during war, the moral status and responsibility of ordinary combatants, war crimes tribunals, genocide and ethnic cleansing, civil war, emerging technologies of war, and the possibility of moving towards a world in which war is no longer necessary.

LAWP 400 War and Justice
Cross-listed with POSC 390-02. "All's fair in love and war," goes the common saying, suggesting that standards of justice or morality are inapplicable to military conflict, which is a realm of survival in which anything goes. Others hold that no war can possibly be just, at least in the contemporary era in which weapons of mass destruction mean that wars wreak a human and environmental impact that cannot possibly be sustainable or legitimate. In this class, we consider both these approaches - realism and pacifism, respectively - and juxtapose them to the just-war tradition, which holds that defensive and limited wars may be justified so long as they follow certain moral guidelines such as proportionality and non-combatant immunity. We will consider when it might be just to go to war, how just wars must be waged, and what, if anything, justice after war consists in. We will approach these questions using both the laws of war and philosophical works about war. We will consider military conflicts from across the globe, including the World Wars, Vietnam, Rwanda, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and more, and from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to the present day. We will consider topics such as humanitarian intervention and the protection of human rights during war, the moral status and responsibility of ordinary combatants, war crimes tribunals, genocide and ethnic cleansing, civil war, emerging technologies of war, and the possibility of moving towards a world in which war is no longer necessary.