Who is best situated to theorize about and criticize a society? Under what conditions does political judgment become possible, and what kinds of distance or involvement sharpen—or distort—political insight? Is political understanding best achieved through abstraction from political life, or through engagement with the practices, conflicts, and institutions that shape it? This selective survey of canonical texts in Western political theory explores these questions and others by examining the role of the political theorist in interpreting, evaluating, and criticizing political life.
Beginning with classical accounts of politics and knowledge in Plato and Aristotle, the course introduces contrasting ways of thinking about the relationship between political ideals, judgment, and lived political life. We then turn to early modern theorists such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes, who confront the problem of political order under conditions of conflict and instability, raising enduring questions about the role of power, authority, and legitimacy in organizing political life. Next, readings from Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt offer competing perspectives on the role material circumstances play—and ought to play—in shaping political thought and engagement. Finally, Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon offer accounts of how embodiment, exclusion, and domination shape the limits and possibilities of political knowledge. Taken together, these thinkers’ works, alongside other selected readings, will invite students to consider when abstraction clarifies political life—and when engagement reveals what abstraction obscures.
This is a reading and writing intensive course. Students are responsible for all of the assigned reading as well as active participation in discussion sections, and we will use informal writing assignments and Blue Book examinations to enhance students’ skills in writing and argument.