Brooklyn College
Department of Political Science
Fall 2002
Modern Political Thought, 702
This course surveys political thought from the 17th to the 19th century. We will examine the texts of key political thinkers during this period in an attempt to properly assess the modernity of their thought and the nature of the political. A modern notion of the political, as we shall see, draws within it questions of power, legitimacy, law, solidarity, economy, secularism and much else besides. We will read these texts for what they say and for what they leave out, to better determine for ourselves what is alive and what is dead in modern political thought.
TEXT: Wootton, David. (Ed.) Modern Political Thought. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1996.
READING SCHEDULE
sept
09 No reading assigned
17 Hobbes, Leviathan (skim Introduction - chap. 12, read: chap. 13-15)
23 Hobbes, Leviathan (read 16-17, 21, 26 29, and skim all other chapters)
30 Locke, Second Treatise of Government (read Preface-chap. 5)
oct
07 Locke, Second Treatise (read chap 6 - end)
16 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality (read beginning to end of Part I)
21 Rousseau, Discourse (read Part II - end)
28 Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"
nov
04 Mill, On Liberty (read chaps. 1-4), and The Subjection of Women
11 Marx,"Alienated Labor." Skim: The Communist Manifesto
18 Marx, "On the Jewish Question"
25 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (Preface and First Essay)
dec
2 Nietzsche, Genealogy (Second Essay)
9 slack / conclusions