Page - 141 - in Reflective Cosmopolitanism - Educating towards inclusive communities through Philosophical Enquiry

IN AND OUT THE PARk (MANUAL) 141 Discussion Plan: Property 1. Is there any difference between “property” and “private property”? 2. Can I consider myself to be my property? 3. Can I consider my mother to be my property? 4. Can I consider my friends to be my property? 5. Can I consider my girl/boyfriend to be my property? 6. Can I consider my body to be my property? 7. Can I consider my neighbourhood to be my property? 8. Can I consider my dog to be my property? 9. Can I consider everything that concerns my person to be my property? Exercise: The Owner Close your eyes and think of the first thing that comes to mind. After a while, open your eyes and, when it’s your turn, say what you have thought of, and the facilitator will write it down on the board. Now, all together decide what kind of relationship each item on the board can be involved in: ownership/possession/belonging/prop- erty, or if it concerns something that cannot be in any of these relationships. Give reasons for your indication. Episode 4: The loot Leading Idea 1: Distributive justice In the fourth episode, the characters have to divide the booty of the theft from the school administration office. Consequently, they face questions about the fairest distribution and what criteria to use. Also, in the third episode, the issue of distributive justice emerges when Jensika and Mario see a boy their age get out of a car driven by a chauffeur, and they mention this as a luxury. Even since the time of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, dis- tributive justice has been defined as that which regulates the distribution of goods and available resources in a way that is proportional to the production and merits of each and every person, while commutative justice is that which regulates contracts and has a goal of balancing the advantages and disadvantages of the contractors. In the idea of distributive justice, an equality criterion is implied, but we need to understand to what kind of equality we are referring. Indeed, for instance, in ancient Greece, the idea of equality was different from that which we are (or should be) familiar with today. The ‘equals’, that is, those who could benefit from a just distribution, were, in the Athenian democracy, only the ‘free men’, excluding women and slaves (and children, of course). Consequently, one can see that in ancient times (but are things so different nowadays?), equality in the possession of goods is actually based on an acceptance of a substantial inequality of individuals determined by chance. It is essential to reflect on the issue of distributive justice in a world where 1% of people possess a high proportion of the global wealth and most people live in conditions of moderate to extreme poverty. The conflict, latent or manifest, engendered by the model of a globalized society that