I have received a few emails about the fact that books have already been loaned out from the library and individuals are finding it difficult to carry out proper research. Admittedly, we do not live in a state of abundance where there exists a single copy of each book for each student (which will be the case when everything exists in a digital format!), but neither are we in  a state of complete scarcity — I do tend to put the most obvious books on my reading lists and then leave it at that, so a good keyword search should reap rewards. Ideally, we ought to have a principle of distribution (Nozick’s first acquisition, Rawls’s redistribution to the least advantaged if inequality is justified, some sort of Marxism distribution by needs and talents…)

I digress. We don’t have justice here. The distribution is primary acquisition or seizure as Hegel put it.

However, lecturers do tend to make the most relevant readings available as a photocopy or as a pdf in Blackboard. And the most important texts remains those of the primary thinkers which can be found second hand in most cases at quite a reasonable price (or in the case of historical texts as free etexts).

There is also quite a bit available electronically, I suggest for the basic stuff, the Blackwell online with relevant keyword searches and also the Routledge and Stanford Encyclopaedias. For more advanced stuff either Google scholar or Jstor. Check out our webpage for these and more.

If there are any obvious missing texts or chapters we can make available via Blackboard, any suggestions about how to make this fairer, any more texts which need to be bought for the library or anyone who wants to share a copy of, say, Rawls’s Theory of Justice after they have finished with it, please just drop a comment below.