POL1201: Political Ideas

This course serves as an introduction to the study of political theory. Political theory analyzes the meaning and significance of fundamental concepts in politics. Starting from such basic concerns as the nature of politics, humans, power, and justice, political theorists explore how these basic starting assumptions organize the norms, practices, and institutions of political and social order. To explore these topics, the field turns to key texts, as well as to political and social events and other media (film, historical documents, etc.). In this introductory course, students will investigate some of the basic texts in political theory, with the goal of learning how to read texts more analytically and to address fundamental questions in political theory. Among the topics that might be the nature of justice and injustice, political obligation and civil disobedience, democracy and other forms of governance. Students who complete this course will understand the deep issues about the nature of politics and will have learned to read and analyze complex texts. They will also have had the opportunity to reflect upon their own ethical engagement in political life and upon the ways in which historically, political ideas change.

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