Justice, the State, and the Individual

This course is nearly at capacity. We strongly recommend you consider at least one alternative course option for your application.

This course will introduce you to some of the most important issues in political thought. What should we think about the nature of justice, and the relationship between justice, morality, law, and social conventions? How do, should, and could individuals and their political communities relate to each other? What is the basis, if any, for the legitimacy of political authority? What are possible approaches to the resolution of political and social conflicts, and what are the relative merits of those approaches? Does it make sense to see political life as a means to individual human happiness? To get at these issues we will read some of the most important works of political thought from the ancient Athens of Plato to late Roman world of Augustine to the revolutionary modes of thought proposed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche.

See sample syllabus here.