🧭 Slow Path Through
Justice
Readings, Thinkers, and Key Texts Across Traditions
Format:
- ⏳
Pace: 1 theme per week (or linger longer)
- 🪶
For each: 1 short reading, 1 longform/optional, 1 reflective prompt
- 🌍
Cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and contemplative
🪷 Week 1: What Is
Justice, Really?
Core Text (short):
🧾
Plato – Republic, Book I (Socrates vs. Thrasymachus on justice)
Optional Longform:
📘
Michael Sandel – Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? (Ch. 1–2)
Prompt:
Is justice about what is right—or what is best for all? What
if they conflict?
🏛️ Week 2: Justice as
Fairness
Core Text (short):
🧾
John Rawls – A Theory of Justice, §1–4 (“Veil of Ignorance” thought
experiment)
Optional:
🎧
Sandel’s Harvard lecture: "What’s a Fair Start?"
Prompt:
Would I still believe the system is just if I didn’t know my
position in it?
🌍 Week 3: Justice Beyond
the West
Core Text (short):
🧾
Confucius – Analects, selected sayings on Yi (rightness,
relational justice)
Optional:
📘
Amartya Sen – The Idea of Justice, Ch. 1–2
Prompt:
Is justice a rule, or a right relationship? Who do I owe my
fairness to?
🧮 Week 4: Distributive
Justice
Core Text (short):
🧾
Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics, Book V (on equity and proportion)
Optional:
📘
Elizabeth Anderson – What Is the Point of Equality? (essay)
Prompt:
Is treating everyone equally always fair? When must equity
mean difference?
🕊️ Week 5: Restorative
Justice
Core Text (short):
🧾
Desmond Tutu – No Future Without Forgiveness, excerpt
Optional:
📘
Howard Zehr – The Little Book of Restorative Justice
Prompt:
Is justice about punishment—or healing? Can restoration
restore dignity?
🧠 Week 6: Psychological
Justice / Cruelty
Core Text (short):
🧾
Judith Shklar – The Liberalism of Fear (essay)
Optional:
📘
Martha Nussbaum – Hiding from Humanity (on shame and disgust)
Prompt:
Is cruelty the greatest injustice? What forms of cruelty go
unnoticed?
📚 Week 7: Literary
Witness to Injustice
Core Text (short):
🧾
Excerpts from To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hunger Angel, or Beloved
Optional:
📘
James Baldwin – The Fire Next Time
Prompt:
What can literature convey about justice that theory cannot?
🧵 Week 8: Justice as
Love, Care, and Repair
Core Text (short):
🧾
bell hooks – Justice: Childhood Love Lessons (from All About Love)
Optional:
📘
Cornel West – Justice is What Love Looks Like in Public (essay/speech)
Prompt:
Can love be a public ethic? What does care-based justice
look like in design?