This class covers the major authors and ideas in political thought
from the middle seventeenth century until the present day.  We will
begin over 100 years before American independence, when the idea of
popular sovereignty was a revolutionary concept, and after passing
through the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, four attempts
at a stable French republic, and two World Wars conclude with the
ominous claim that the contemporary individual is less free today
than under King Charles I of England.  In doing so, we will encounter
men whose ideas led people to fight and die for freedom, and men
whose ideas, when put into practice, resulted in the slaughter of
millions.  While it may seem naïve to give such power to mere ideas
today, over fifty years after the first atomic bombs were dropped,
these awe-inspiring weapons have no will of their own: it is our
ideas which motivate their manufacture and determine the ends we put
them to.  This course is your opportunity to engage the ideas which
have shaped, and continue to shape, the fundamental structure of the
world we live in.
A tentative list of course readings includes:  Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan; John Locke, Second Treatise of Government; Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and On Social
Contract; Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations; Karl Marx, Communist
Manifesto; Fredreich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals; Max
Weber, “On Bureaucracy”; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice; and Michel
Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
	I hope to see you there!