POL 3652:
HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT II
[MODERNITY AND ITS CRITICS]
Spring 2005

Section 1:  TuTh 12:00-1:50, Cina 308

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This course seeks to satisfy a variety of different goals.  Ideally, I'd like this course to do the following:

1. to show political theory as I see it, with particular concentration on contemporary theory (meaning Rawls & later, with a bit of attention to Locke, Burke, Marx, and Lenin).  I don't see the course as being particularly bound by a Bulletin description that was written about 30 years ago — not that our predecessors aren't to be respected but rather that the field has greatly progressed and there are better things to study.
2. to teach how to read and interpret a text through a variety of analytic approaches:  (a) close reading and logical analysis;  (b) situating the author within h/her historical and biographical context;  and (c) situating the author within a philosophical school and tradition.
3. to prepare you for ... what?  This is the last (or at any rate, the highest-numbered) political theory course you will take in the department, so it can't be to prepare you for later courses.  Nor for courses in the other Pol Sci subfields, because they really don't rely on political theory at all (in the sense of this course).  Perhaps to prepare you for graduate school — although few of you will go there, most going to law school, to other graduate fields, or to the wide world.
4. to go through the traditional material that I don't know well, not having been trained originally in political theory?  Well, if I were 20 years younger, I might see that as a good exercise, but (a) I've made it this far without knowing it and (b) I don't see it as central to my own concerns (or what should be others' concerns either).
5. to study what you will find interesting?  It isn't that your interests aren't important to me, but I can't really know in advance what you will find interesting.  On the other hand, I do prefer theorists whose concerns relate to problems engaging us today.  Thus I want us to study what will prepare you for the discourses you will encounter as citizens in the public forum — whether that forum is the coffeehouse or the ashram, as Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph phrases it.
6. to study some theorists who I really admire, e.g., Gandhi and Habermas.

Putting all these desires into a kettle and stirring, I've come up with what you see below.  I have tried to give us enough time with each theorist and tradition to sink into h/her/its world a bit.  However, we (and that includes me) need to recognize that the course is not intended to make you learned in any one of the theorists and traditions, let alone all of them;  rather, it is intended to give you an overview of political theory today and a taste of different approaches.  I want to concentrate on the basic insights or impulses that drive each tradition.  Our discussions (and my exam questions) should reflect that limited ambition.

The texts for the course are as listed below;  all are required.  Not listed are those of our readings that can be found online.

• John Rawls (1971/rev.1999).  A Theory of Justice.  Cambridge, MA:  Belknap.
• Axel Honneth (1995).  The Struggle for Recognition:  The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts.  Cambridge, MA:  MIT.
• Michel Foucault (1965).  Madness and Civilization:  A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason .  NY:  Vintage.
• Joan Bondurant (1958/rev.1988).  Conquest of Violence.  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press.
• Jürgen Habermas (1998).  The Inclusion of the Other:  Studies in Political Theory.  Cambridge, MA:  MIT.

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Disability statement  |  Incompletes & extensions  |  Respect

I am committed to being your firm ally in your education.  I'm interested in you, not just your talents as a political analyst.   Lots of things happen to students outside of school that nevertheless affect their ability to learn and perform.  And so I know that every student, without exception, has always done the best s/he could, if all the circumstances are taken into account.   This includes you.  Therefore, if you have trouble figuring out what to study, or if you study hard and get a bad grade on an exam or assignment anyway, or things simply aren't going well in your life, come and talk to me.  Please don't just suffer in silence!

FOOTNOTES

*Information about me: I am an Associate Professor of Political Science. My professional research interests are in the intersection of social science and moral philosophy, i.e., in the role of moral beliefs within social dynamics. This makes me particularly concerned with political philosophy and political theory. I concentrate primarily upon European political theory, within which primarily postmodern theory, within which primarily Frankfurt School / Critical Theory work, within which Jürgen Habermas, within which Discourse Ethics. I have written a number of works in this area:  "A Second Moment of Discourse Ethics" (1998), Defining Political Development (1988), and Grounding Political Development (1991), and, with Shawn Rosenberg and Dana Ward, Political Reasoning and Cognition: A Piagetian View (1988).  I'm currently at work on a book, Ways of Relating.  You can find my vita here on my web site.