Bentham

Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvards history. Now its your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.

Philosophy

2/8. Can cannibalism be justified if it produces the greatest good for the greatest number?

In the second in a series of lectures drawn from Harvard professor Michael Sandel's famous undergraduate course on justice, he introduces the British utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, with reference to an infamous 19th century legal case from Victorian England - the shipwreck of the Mignonette.

* First broadcast: BBC Four, 8:30PM Tuesday, 01 February, 2011

Philosophy

A specially-commissioned documentary by BBC Four in which renowned Harvard professor Michael Sandel looks at the philosophy of justice.

Is it acceptable to torture a terrorist in order to discover where a bomb has been hidden? Should wearing the burka in public be banned in Europe, if the majority of citizens disapprove? Should beggars be cleared off the streets of London or New York, or your home town?

Satyajit Ray is internationally acknowledged as one of the great masters of world cinema. From his extraordinarily accomplished debut 'Pather Panchali', his films - many of them masterpieces - have won him legions of admirers, among them Akira Kurosawa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, V.S. Naipaul and Martin Scorsese.

The Illusion of Free Markets argues that our faith in “free markets” has severely distorted American politics and punishment practices. Bernard Harcourt traces the birth of the idea of natural order to eighteenth-century economic thought and reveals its gradual evolution through the Chicago School of economics and ultimately into today’s myth of the free market.

This textbook provides a calculus-based introduction to economics. Students blessed with a working knowledge of the calculus will find that this text facilitates their study of the basic analytical framework of economics. The textbook examines a wide range of micro and macro topics, including prices and markets, equity versus efficiency, Rawls versus Bentham, accounting and the theory of the firm, optimal lot size and just in time, monopoly and competition, exchange rates and the balance of payments, inflation and unemployment, fiscal and monetary policy, IS-LM analysis, aggregate demand and supply, speculation and rational expectations, growth and development, exhaustible resources and over-fishing. While the content is similar to that of conventional introductory economics textbook, the assumption that the reader knows and enjoys the calculus distinguishes this book from the traditional text.