Courses

We can lean heavily on the concepts of reason and rationality to justify and criticize political thought, speech, and conduct. But we also find it difficult to explain what it means to be reasonable or rational in politics. What is reason? What does it mean to have a reason for a belief or an action? If someone behaves unreasonably, what are they failing to do? Is reason at odds with passion, rhetoric, authority, or religious conviction? Are there spcial ways in which citizens and public officials should reason in public life? Is it realistic to expect people to exercise "public" forms of reason in a culturally diverse and politically polarized society that sometimes seems indifferent to rational argument? What is the relationship between "reasonable" political discourse and familiar contemporary concepts like "political correctness"? This course studies some influential classical and contemporary answers to these and related questions drawn from a variety of thinkers, especially Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Onora O'niell, and Christine Korsgaard.