POL320Y1Y L5101
Modern Political Thought
Themes
This course offers an introduction to modern, primarily Western, political thought. We will discuss some of the most important texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, by focusing on three central themes. First, students will consider the meaning of history, including the questions of how ‘enlightenment’ and ‘modernity’ can be understood, and whether they represent progress or decline. Second, the course will examine the defining political values and ideals of modernity, with an emphasis on freedom. We will explore whether and how political communities might be emancipated through the reform of the institutions that govern them. Finally, we will think about the relations between those communities, asking whether modernity might create new opportunities for peace between states, or whether this idea is utopian, while exploring questions about colonialism, intervention and the difference between the West and “the rest”. We will attempt to understand the contemporary relevance of these debates.
Texts
Al-Afghani, Al-Radd 'ala al-Dahriyyi (‘Refutation of the Materialists’); Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France; Hegel, The Philosophy of Right; Kang, Da Tong Shu (‘The Book of Great Unity’), Kant, Political Writings; Marx, The Marx and Engels Reader; Mill, On Liberty and Other Writings; Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, Rousseau, Basic Political Writings; Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Format and Requirements
participation (10%), in-class test (25%), paper (35%) and final exam (30%).
Prerequisites
POL200Y1 or POL200Y5 or (POLC70H3, POLC71H3)