PHIL 232(S) Modern Political Thought (Same as Political Science 232)

PSCI 232(S) Modern Political Thought (Same as Philosophy 232)
This course provides a close reading of texts by some of the major thinkers of the early modern and modern period: Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), F. M. de Voltaire (1694-1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), and Karl Marx (1818-1883). We will look at the contexts in which these thinkers wrote, and the political problems and events to which their writings were (in part) a response. Some of the questions posed by these early thinkers are however still enormously important to politics today, and we will also read these texts with these questions in mind: Are politicians obligated to act honorably and morally, or only to secure the peace and keep office? What is human nature really like, outside of political society? Why should people obey political authority anyway? Who gets to be a citizen, and why? What do citizens owe one another? Should democratic states tolerate groups with highly unorthodox beliefs and practices, and if so, why? How did social and political inequality come about? And does justice require an equitable distribution of power, and of economic resources?
Format: lecture/discussion. Requirements: active class participation, 3 papers (varying from 4-8 pages in length).
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 21). Preference given to sophomores and political science majors.
Political Theory Subfield
Hour: DEVEAUX