Courses

What is the relationship between law and justice? Are capacities of political judgment shared by the many or reserved for the few? What does human equality consist of and what are its implications? Can individual freedom be reconciled with the demands of political community? What are the origins and effects of persistent gender inequalities? These are some of the crucial questions that we will address in this introductory course in political theory. The course is divided into five thematic sections, each addressing an enduring political problem or issue and centered on a key text in the history of political thought: 1. Laws, Obligations, and the Question of Disobedience; Sophocles, Antigone; 2. Democratic Citizenship and the Capacities of Political Judgment; Plato, Republic; 3. Origins and Effects of (In)equality; John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government; 4. Paradoxes of Freedom; Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract; 5. The Woman Question; John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women.