POL320Y1Y L5101
Modern Political Thought
Themes
This course offers an introduction to the history of modern Western political thought. We closely examine a series of representative texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to uncover and apprehend the ideas and ideals that form and inform the modern Western world. Through a textual analysis we find new or newly reinterpreted concepts of human nature, progress, liberty, equality, justice, and power that befit a modern understanding of history, philosophy, culture, and politics—a modern understanding that continues to set the boundary of our current political discussions, debates, and affiliations.
Texts
Rousseau, Basic Political Writings; Kant, Idea for a Universal History; Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind; Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France; Hegel, Philosophy of Right; ?Marx, Karl Marx Selected Writings; Mill, On Liberty; Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals.
Format and Requirements
term tests and essays.
Prerequisites
POL200Y1 or POL200Y5 or (POLC70H3, POLC71H3)