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PSIR203 HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT I

Course Objectives

The course covers the key political thinkers from the Ancient Greek world to the early modern, culminating in the French Revolution of 1789.  Firstly, we will consider the ideas of the Ancient Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle.  These thinkers set on foot an enquiry as to what it means to live the ‘good life’- or to live well and wisely.  Further enquiries emerge as to the nature of the political order most suited to the human personality, and thus, by virtue of its discovery, to do justice to the community.  The Medieval period of Thomas Aquinas is one in which history witnesses a decline in humanist enquiry and speculation and a shift in emphasis to religious bases of order, not just in a moral sense as much as in legalistic codes conferring duties and obligations upon citizens.  Thomas Aquinas represents something of a bridge between the ancient and modern worlds. Aquinas seeks in some respects to reconcile the rationalism of Ancient Greece with the terms of Christian revelation that held a tight grip on intellectual enquiry during the middle ages.  We then study two thinkers who begin to usher in a new age of scientific knowledge and enquiry, Machiavelli and Hobbes.  Both thinkers rejected outright that there is any role for moral speculation in politics, and neither sought to impose a theory of justice or prescription for a utopian society.  Instead the intellectual atmosphere changes profoundly.  Machiavelli and Hobbes attempt to discover reliable truths about the human character based on neutral scientific observation.  This leads to a completely different set of principles for our understanding, and indeed our involvement in, the political world around us.  We then continue with an analysis of the thought of the “father of modern liberalism”, John Locke.  Lock’s ideas on freedom, toleration and property rights very much resonate with us today.  We then consider the thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau whose ideas on property and the social inequality it causes could not be more unlike Locke.  Rousseau was a radical republican and is seen as a key figure in one of history’s key events, the French Revolution of 1789.  We conclude the course by considering the thinking of David Hume on the subject of scientific enquiry, morality and politics.

Course Content

This course will introduce students to some of the fundamental concerns of political thought. What does it mean to do justice to the community? How should our society be organised and administered? Can humans live together, and if so how? Is politics moral activity? What is the nature of humans? These are just some of the fundamental questions the classical political thinkers attempt to address. Their answers vary enormously. However it is not just a case of establishing claims to truth to do with the political world, we need to be aware that the great political thinkers were equally concerned to justify their claims. How do they claim to know (or think they know) they are right? Students will be thus introduced to more involved and very important philosophical questions concerning the nature of enquiry itself. What is the nature of political reality (ontology), and how do we know (epistemology)? Our classical political thinkers to be studied on this course supply us with highly detailed and often brilliant accounts of both. And, importantly, their ideas remain valid in terms of the ways we go about attempting to understand our own political world today.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completion of the course students are expected to be able to demonstrate:

General

• basic skills of academic enquiry and independent library research relevant to the subject;
• an ability to communicate in writing and orally, and to work independently; 
• basic time-management and self-organisation skills.

Subject Specific

• knowledge of the ideas of the key political thinkers covered on the course;
• knowledge of the recurring themes of political theory – human nature, the state, etc;
• some limited appreciation of the variation in methods of enquiry in political speculation.

Program Outcomes Matrix

0: No Contribution 1: Little Contribution 2: Partial Contribution 3: Full Contribution