Democracy gives people control over their government on a collaborative and inclusive basis, via operational and selectional constraints, thereby reducing the government's dominating power. This set of seminars will focus on why the formula requires control, not participation, and why it gives control to people severally, not to the people as a body; it will explore the operational constraints, such as the rule of law, and the selectional constraints, such as electoral process, on which it seeks to build control; and it will investigate the point of democratic control.

This course surveys a hidden canon of African American film and also uncovers the roots of representational injustice in Hollywood and the secret, but cardinal role Woodrow Wilson played in the production and distribution of Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" that led to the rebirth of the KKK. Wilson's policy of segregation was adapted by Hollywood as a self-censoring industry regulation of representation. Black people could only appear on screen as subservient and marginal characters, never as equals, partners or leaders. This industry code, Wilson's legacy, has become second nature to Hollywood.

Many political scientists worry that representative democracy in the United States is failing. It is gridlocked, elites are polarized, party competition is dysfunctional, public policy favors the wealthy, gerrymandering dilutes people's votes. Are these really failures of democratic representation? We will consider this question in the perspective of the political theory of representative democracy. We will also read some recent works by political scientists and other observers, but this is mainly a seminar in political theory: our goal is to explore what democratic citizens should expect from their representative institutions.

As I expect this to be the last time I teach a graduate seminar at Princeton, it seems a suitable occasion for a critical assessment of my work in ethics. The idea is that graduate students and some invited guests will present critiques of my work to which I will respond, followed by discussion. Topics to be covered include the foundations of ethics, utilitarianism, the ethics of our treatment of animals, our obligations to assist people in extreme poverty, and issues in bioethics, including my critique of the traditional ethic of the inviolability of human life.

The course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the legal regime of the European Union (EU), including its supranational system of human rights protection, in comparative perspective with the United States (US). The course covers the most important areas of EU law, overviewing both the EU's constitutional framework and its core substantive contents, through the comparative prism of the US federal experience. To this end, the course examines the EU's normative and economic constitutions and explores a number of recent unprecedented constitutional developments, including Brexit, the rule of law crisis and Covid-19.

This is a required course for the ten Graduate Prize Fellows (GPFs) in the University Center for Human Values. It is expected that the GPFs register for the course in both the fall and spring semesters of the year they are GPFs. The course has three central goals. First, the seminar is designed to support students' dissertation work while providing special aid to the human values aspect of the dissertation. Second, the seminar has an intensive focus on in-person academic performance skills. Third, the seminar aims to help graduate students to work toward the academic job market.

An introduction to central topics of moral philosophy. Questions include: What makes an action morally right or wrong, and why? Is the right action the one with the best consequences? Do our intentions matter for the rightness of our actions? Is there a moral difference between killing someone and letting someone die? Is there 'moral luck'? What makes someone's life go best for her? What is the moral status of future persons? Is abortion morally permissible? Is it permissible to kill animals to eat them? Is there a single true morality or is moral truth relative to cultures? Does anything really matter or did we just evolve to think so?

We shall study the ethical theories and contributions to moral philosophy of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Hellenistic philosophers.

This seminar will focus on the philosophy of moral agency and responsibility, blame and punishment. It will examine how human interactions are permeated by evaluative understandings of agency and responsibility, and whether such evaluative understandings are well grounded. It will consider what implications this has for inter-personal relations, as well as for social institutions such as criminal justice. We will approach these issues from a multi-disciplinary perspective, examining how philosophical, scientific and institutional considerations can be brought into useful contact with one another.

The seminar examines Kant's main writings in practical philosophy. The goal is to understand Kant's ethical thought generally, but in this edition we pay particular attention to his account of moral motivation, practical belief, and moral argument.

The idea is to look at some central capacities of the human mind beginning with judgement and reasoning, including reasoning from perception, then moving on to discuss the capacity to make value judgements, ascribe and assume responsibility, and achieve the status of a person.

An introduction to theories of social justice and examination of their implications in areas of contemporary social and political controversy. The first half of the course introduces the problem of social justice and examines two classic positions, as articulated by John Locke (name associated with liberalism, property, and capitalism) and Karl Marx (name associated with the critique of capitalism). The second half of the course focuses on contemporary theories of justice. We will read authors such as John Rawls and Robert Nozick, and examine controversies over poverty, gender, racial injustice, equal opportunity, and environmental justice.

Confucianism as an ancient tradition of thought has fundamentally shaped Chinese culture and deeply influenced East Asian societies for many centuries. Today, many people in China and around the globe still explore the contemporary relevance of Confucianism, and contemporary Confucian political philosophy is emerging as a vibrant field of thought. The first half of this seminar course critically discusses classical Confucian political thought and examines its strengths and weaknesses. The second half explores how contemporary Confucian political philosophy responds to modern Western political ideas and institutions.

With a focus on contemporary controversies in public life, this course surveys philosophical and theological perspectives on the ethos of liberal democracy oriented toward rights, equality, and freedom. For example, what do Christian beliefs and practices imply about issues related to feminism, racism, nationalism, and pluralism? What is the relationship between religious conviction, morality and law? Special emphasis on selected political and economic problems, bioethics, criminal justice, sexuality, the environment, war, immigration, and the role of religion in American culture.

The course examines major moral controversies in public life and differing concepts of justice, the common good and civic virtues. It seeks to help students think and write about the ethical considerations that ought to shape public institutions and guide public authorities. These issues may include equal treatment of cultures and nations, justice in war, market regulation (incl. crypto), the virtues of citizens in a capitalist society, property rights, women's rights in developing countries, fairness in a world of digital technology, and cross-border migration.