History of Political Philosophy: Politics and Power

History of Political Philosophy: Politics and Power is a Social Science class taught by Falguni A. Sheth.

Course Description
Foucault argues that the role of the sovereign in the contemporary polity is to manage, and decide who will be forced to lives and who will be allowed to die. How is citizenship construed and managed throughout the history of political theory? How do gender, race, and ethnicity manifest themselves in "universalist" political theories? Can liberalism tolerate differences or does it attempt to annihilate them in subtle ways? Are some populations valorized in order to legitimate the vilification and dehumanization of others? If so, how? In this course, we will explore the dominant ideas, which remain with us today, of political philosophers from the ancient era to the contemporary world. centuries, along with commentaries/critical articles by contemporary philosophers. This course will be reading-, writing-, and theory- intensive. Authors may include Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Gobineau, Kant, Hegel, Rousseau, Du Bois, Alain Locke, Beauvoir, Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Charles Mills, among others. Open to first year students. This is a prerequisite for any other political philosophy course.