Mar 28, 2024  
Catalogue 2018-2019 
    
Catalogue 2018-2019 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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POLI 170 - Political Theory

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)


Intro to Political Theory: A Critical Survey of Western Thought. A critical introductory survey of the history of some of the canonical texts in Western Political Thought, this course engages with the works of Plato, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Kant, Tocqueville and Foucault.Our approach of these authors, who are all considered “canonical” (i.e., essential to the history of thought), is critical and contextual. How is it that these Western, white, male philosophers who wrote about freedom, equality, justice, power, government, nature, human nature, during Greek Antiquity, or the Renaissance, still permeate the way we think of these matters today? What may we still learn from them about these ideas? Is their continued influence on politics and how we think about it today, always a good thing, or deserved? What grants them such authority and with what effects? How did they think of gender, race, class, and how does this influence political visions of today? We explore major debates in Political Theory, understanding politics not just as the locus of power incarnated in governmental institutions, but more broadly as organizing power relations and norms throughout our everyday lives. Political theory is understood as the practice of engaging conceptually and critically with politics. Claire Sagan.

An introduction to the nature, types, and problems of political theory. The core of the readings consists of selections from what are considered classic works in the field. The course emphasizes the relevance of these ideas to current political developments and scholarship. Andrew Davison.



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