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Course Description

This course will survey a variety of historical thinkers, societal predicaments and political concepts to provide students with the foundational, theoretical tools of normative political theory. Ideas can be powerful catalysts for progressive change, but they can also be utilized to maintain and perpetuate oppression and exclusion. Questions addressed in this course include: “What is human nature?”; “Are justice and democracy compatible or conflictual political ideals?”; “When, if ever, can citizens of a democracy justifiably break the law?”; “Can the idea of a social contract usefully illuminate the justification for, and limits of, government?" A diversity of values and political aspirations will be explored, ranging from anarchism and individualism, to statism, civil disobedience, colonialism, equality and justice. Students will examine the writings of a diverse range of thinkers, including Plato, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Emma Goldman and Martin Luther King, Jr. This foundational theory course canvasses the ideas of a number political thinkers who diagnosed the pressing societal predicaments of their day, and exercised the intellectual skill of imagining collective solutions to these problems. Students will be expected to demonstrate both a comprehension of the material covered in the course and the ability to critically evaluate that material.