Political Theory

Units

1. 1

   Plato and Aristotle

   4 lessons

   1. The challenge of justiceReconstruct the challenge of Plato's Republic, books I and II: Thrasymachus's claim that justice is the advantage of the stronger, Glaucon's three classes of goods and social-contract story, and the ring of Gyges test of whether justice is good in itself.
   2. Plato's ideal cityExplain Plato's answer in the Republic: the parallel of the three-part city and the three-part soul, justice as each part doing its own work, and why philosophers must rule, using the allegory of the cave.
   3. Aristotle on the polisExplain why Aristotle calls humans political animals, why he calls the polis natural, and why a share in public authority rather than residence makes someone a citizen.
   4. Aristotle's classification of regimesClassify a regime by who has final authority and whose interests its rule serves; explain what mixed institutions and a substantial middle group may contribute to a polity.
2. 2

   Machiavelli

   3 lessons

   1. The PrinceExplain Machiavelli's The Prince: its setting in the Italian wars, the break with mirror-for-princes advice through the effectual truth, virtu against fortuna, and his answer to whether it is better to be feared or loved.
   2. Discourses on LivyExplain Machiavelli's republicanism in the Discourses on Livy: the cycle of regimes taken from Polybius, the mixed constitution of Rome, conflict between nobles and people as the source of liberty, and civic virtue.
   3. Politics and dirty handsExamine whether good politics can require morally wrong acts, through reason of state, Michael Walzer's problem of dirty hands (1973), and Isaiah Berlin's reading of Machiavelli as revealing a plurality of incompatible values.
3. 3

   Hobbes

   3 lessons

   1. Hobbes's state of natureReconstruct Leviathan chapter 13: natural equality, the three causes of quarrel, competition, diffidence and glory, and the war of all against all in which life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, modeled as a prisoner's dilemma.
   2. Laws of nature and the covenantDistinguish Hobbes's right of nature from the laws of nature, explain why covenants without the sword are but words, and show how the covenant authorizes a sovereign as an artificial person who represents the people.
   3. Absolute sovereigntyExplain why Hobbes's sovereign must be absolute and undivided, the limits set by the inalienable right of self-preservation and the liberty of subjects, and the critique, sharpened by Locke, that the cure is worse than the disease.
4. 4

   Locke

   3 lessons

   1. Locke's state of natureExplain Locke's state of nature in the Second Treatise: a state of perfect freedom and equality governed by the law of nature, natural rights to life, liberty and estate, and each person's executive power to punish violations, and why its inconveniences lead to civil government.
   2. Locke on propertyReconstruct Locke's labour theory of property in Second Treatise chapter 5: self-ownership, mixing labour with what is common, the spoilage and enough-and-as-good provisos, and how money lets people accumulate unequal property with tacit consent, and weigh the colonial use of the argument.
   3. Consent, limited government and resistanceExplain Locke's account of government by consent, express and tacit, the trust given to a limited legislative power, majority rule, and the right of the people to resist and dissolve a government that breaks its trust, and trace the argument into the Declaration of Independence.
5. 5

   Rousseau

   3 lessons

   1. Discourse on inequalityExplain Rousseau's Second Discourse (1755): natural man moved by amour de soi and pity, perfectibility, the stages from savage to society, amour-propre and the first man who fenced land, and the fraudulent social contract of the rich, as a critique of Hobbes and Locke.
   2. The general willExplain the problem of The Social Contract (1762), the total alienation of each to the whole, the general will as distinct from the will of all, civil and moral freedom, being forced to be free, and why Rousseau rejects representation and partial associations.
   3. Rousseau's legacyTrace Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution and the Jacobins, on Kant's autonomy and on democratic theory, and weigh the liberal critique of Constant and Berlin, comparing Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau on the social contract.
6. 6

   Utilitarianism and Mill on liberty

   4 lessons

   1. UtilitarianismExplain Bentham's principle of utility and felicific calculus, Mill's revision with higher and lower pleasures, and the main objections, the tyranny of the majority over individuals and the problem of justice, with a worked utility calculation.
   2. The harm principleExplain Mill's fear of the tyranny of the majority, the harm principle of On Liberty (1859), the self-regarding and other-regarding distinction, his rejection of paternalism and its exceptions, and apply the principle to cases such as drugs, helmets and offensive conduct.
   3. Freedom of expressionReconstruct Mill's four arguments for liberty of thought and discussion in On Liberty chapter 2, the corn-dealer example that limits speech by its context, and compare Mill's view with the American incitement standard in Brandenburg v. Ohio and with modern debates over hate speech and online platforms.
   4. Two concepts of libertyExplain Isaiah Berlin's 1958 distinction between negative liberty, freedom from interference, and positive liberty, self-mastery, his argument that positive liberty can be twisted into coercion through the divided self, his value pluralism, and Pettit's republican freedom as non-domination as a third view.
7. 7

   Marx and Marxism

   3 lessons

   1. Historical materialismExplain Marx's materialist conception of history: forces and relations of production as the economic base, the legal and political superstructure, class struggle as the motor of history, the sequence of modes of production, and how contradictions between forces and relations bring revolution, with the main criticisms.
   2. Alienation and exploitationExplain Marx's four forms of alienated labour from the 1844 Manuscripts, and the theory of exploitation in Capital: labour power as a commodity, the working day divided into necessary and surplus labour, surplus value and the rate of exploitation, with a worked calculation, and the main objections.
   3. The state and revolutionExplain Marx's theory of the state as an instrument of class rule, the Manifesto's call for proletarian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the withering away of the state, the lessons Marx drew from the Paris Commune, and how Lenin and later regimes used and changed these ideas.
8. 8

   Rawls and justice

   4 lessons

   1. The original positionExplain Rawls's original position in A Theory of Justice (1971): justice as fairness, the veil of ignorance and what it hides, the parties' rational choice, the maximin rule compared with maximizing average utility in a worked payoff table, and reflective equilibrium.
   2. The two principles of justiceState Rawls's two principles of justice: equal basic liberties, and fair equality of opportunity with the difference principle; explain lexical priority, apply the difference principle to inequalities that raise the worst-off, and explain why Rawls says natural talents are morally arbitrary.
   3. Political liberalismExplain Rawls's later turn in Political Liberalism (1993): the fact of reasonable pluralism, the burdens of judgment, a freestanding political conception, the overlapping consensus as opposed to a mere modus vivendi, and the idea of public reason, applied to arguments in public debate.
   4. Equality of whatCompare the main answers to Sen's 1979 question, equality of what: welfare, resources (Dworkin's auction and insurance), and capabilities (Sen and Nussbaum); explain luck egalitarianism's distinction between choice and brute luck, and Anderson's relational critique, applied to cases of disability and expensive tastes.
9. 9

   Nozick and communitarianism

   3 lessons

   1. Nozick's entitlement theoryExplain Nozick's entitlement theory of justice in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974): justice in acquisition, in transfer and in rectification; the distinction between historical and end-state or patterned principles; self-ownership and side constraints; the minimal state; and taxation as comparable to forced labour.
   2. The Wilt Chamberlain argumentReconstruct Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain argument step by step, compute the shift from distribution D1 to D2, state its conclusion that liberty upsets patterns, and evaluate the main replies: that background institutions shape what transfers are just, that the fans did not consent to the effects on third parties, and Cohen's challenge to self-ownership.
   3. The communitarian critiqueExplain the communitarian critique of liberalism in the 1980s: Sandel's unencumbered self, MacIntyre's narrative self and the loss of tradition after the Enlightenment, Taylor's social thesis and politics of recognition, and Walzer's spheres of justice, and assess the liberal replies.
10. 10

    Democratic theory

    4 lessons

    1. Justifying democracyCompare the main justifications of democracy: instrumental arguments from better outcomes, including Condorcet's jury theorem with a worked probability and Sen's famine argument; intrinsic arguments from equal respect and political equality; and Plato's and Brennan's epistocratic challenge.
    2. Social choice and democracyShow how individual preferences can fail to add up to a coherent collective choice: the Condorcet paradox worked through with three voters, Arrow's impossibility theorem and its conditions, how different voting rules give different winners from the same ballots, and Riker's and Mackie's opposing conclusions for democracy.
    3. RepresentationExplain Pitkin's four views of representation, formalistic, descriptive, symbolic and substantive; the trustee versus delegate debate from Burke's 1774 speech to Bristol; Mansbridge's newer forms such as promissory and gyroscopic representation; and the case for descriptive representation, using data on women in legislatures.
    4. Deliberative and participatory democracyExplain deliberative democracy: Habermas's ideal speech situation and the force of the better argument, Cohen's and Gutmann and Thompson's conditions of reason-giving, evidence from Fishkin's deliberative polls and Ireland's citizens' assembly, and the critiques from difference democrats, agonists and realists.
11. 11

    Feminist political theory

    3 lessons

    1. Liberal feminismTrace liberal feminism from Wollstonecraft's Vindication (1792) through Mill and Taylor's The Subjection of Women (1869) to Friedan and Okin: equal rights, education and the extension of liberal principles to women, the milestones of suffrage, and the critique that formal equality leaves the family and structural inequality untouched.
    2. The public and private divideExplain the feminist critique of the liberal public and private divide: the personal is political, Pateman's sexual contract beneath the social contract, the politics of unpaid domestic labour measured with time-use data, and how the critique changed law on marital rape and domestic violence; weigh liberal replies about privacy.
    3. Intersectionality and careExplain intersectionality from the Combahee River Collective and Crenshaw's 1989 analysis of DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, read data on the intersecting wage gap, and explain the ethics of care from Gilligan to Tronto and Kittay as a challenge to justice-based political theory.
12. 12

    Power and legitimacy

    4 lessons

    1. Three faces of powerExplain the three faces of power debate: Dahl's decision-making power in Who Governs? (1961), Bachrach and Baratz's agenda-setting second face (1962), and Lukes's third face, shaping preferences (1974), illustrated with Crenson's study of air pollution in Gary and East Chicago and Gaventa's Appalachian valley.
    2. Authority and legitimacyExplain the difference between power, authority and legitimacy; Weber's three types of legitimate authority, traditional, charismatic and legal-rational, with the routinization of charisma; normative theories of legitimacy, consent, fair procedure and Raz's service conception; and data on trust in government.
    3. Foucault on powerExplain Michel Foucault's analysis of power: sovereign power contrasted with disciplinary power in Discipline and Punish (1975), Bentham's panopticon as a model of surveillance and self-discipline, normalization and the power-knowledge link, and biopower over populations, with criticisms of Foucault's account.
    4. Civil disobedienceExplain civil disobedience as public, nonviolent, conscientious lawbreaking accepting punishment; trace it from Thoreau (1849) through Gandhi's Salt March (1930) and King's Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963); state Rawls's conditions for justified civil disobedience; and weigh Chenoweth and Stephan's evidence on nonviolent campaigns and the debate over accepting punishment.
13. 13

    Ethics and society

    4 lessons

    1. Consequentialism and deontologyCompare consequentialist and deontological ethics: act and rule consequentialism, Kant's categorical imperative in its universal law and humanity formulas, side constraints and the doctrine of double effect, applied to the trolley problem and its footbridge variant with survey evidence on how people judge them.
    2. Virtue ethicsExplain virtue ethics: Aristotle's eudaimonia, virtue as a mean between excess and deficiency illustrated with courage and generosity, practical wisdom and habituation; its modern revival through Anscombe and MacIntyre; and the objections that it gives no action guidance and that character is less stable than it assumes, with the situationist evidence.
    3. Abortion and moral statusAnalyse the philosophical debate over abortion: the standard argument from the fetus's personhood, criteria for moral status, Thomson's violinist argument that even granting personhood may not settle the question, Marquis's future-like-ours argument, and the legal history from Roe (1973) to Dobbs (2022), with public opinion data, treating all positions fairly.
    4. Environmental ethics and future generationsExplain the main positions in environmental ethics: Leopold's land ethic, Singer's case for animals, Hardin's tragedy of the commons modelled as a payoff game, and obligations to future people, including the discount rate debate between Stern and Nordhaus and Parfit's non-identity problem.