POL 120 INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL THOUGHT
This is a reading, writing, and discussion intensive course that introduces students to the history of political thought through an engagement with important political texts spanning the ancient, modern, and contemporary periods in the West. We will ask hard questions about justice, truth, virtue, happiness and the good life, individual and common good, the foundations of political societies, the origins and work of inequality, the value of freedom, subjection, subjectivity and citizenship, morality, and many others. In addition to looking to more traditional “canonical” voices within the discipline of political theory (Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche), this course examines the critical interventions staged by feminist and critical race scholars (Wollstonecraft, W.E.B Du Bois, Carole Pateman, Simone de Beauvoir, and bell hooks) into the ongoing conversations and debates shaping contemporary political thought.
Course Types
Classical Studies Elective