Updated Introduction to Political Philosophy Syllabus

I’m making some tweaks to my Introduction to Political Philosophy syllabus this year, so thought I’d post an updated handbook here. The two key changes are that I’m dropping Robert Nozick (who’s basically just Mill on steroids anyway) and replacing him with Carl Schmitt, whose discussion of politics as fundamentally concerned with the distinction between friends and enemies offers a more meaningful contrast with mainstream liberalism; and I’m getting rid of the free choice week I used to have in week 12 in order to introduce some anarchism via Errico Malatesta. I kept finding that I wanted to articulate something like the anarchist emphasis on our mutual dependency and the centrality of mutual aid to human survival as a contrast with the more individualist and sovereign visions of the human person that we were reading in Locke and Mill, and Malatesta’s Anarchy does a good job of articulating that in terms that make sense in the context of the tradition as I’ve constructed it here. So I’m hoping these switches will make for a slightly more rounded sense of the different alternatives at play within modern Western political philosophy. As ever, if you’d like to see any of my teaching materials, I’m very happy to share them – drop me a line on marika.rose@gmail.com

You can see from the weekly overview the way I’ve structured the module. The class has one two-hour teaching session per week, so I use the second half of one class to introduce a key concept and the thinker whose discussion of the concept we’re going to be reading; then the students go away and do the reading; then the first half of the next class we spend discussing the set text via a mixture of general questions and detailed analysis of extracts from the text. The module as a whole is still pretty indebted to Robin James’ Social and Political Philosophy syllabus.

The full module handbook is as follows:

Catalogue Summary:

This module introduces themes, theoretical perspectives and concepts in the study of politics and political philosophy and aims to develop an understanding of how political institutions operate and of how they are underpinned by adherence to a variety of political philosophies, or ideologies that act, globally, to order the global environment. The concepts and institutions studies are from a western perspective in order to, first, ground students in a knowledge of these themes per se but, second, to provide a framework for comparative study of non-western polities analysed in greater depth in Levels 5 and 6, such as those in the Middle East and China, in order to gauge the extent that western concepts of politics have been adapted, accepted or rejected in different environments.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the conclusion of this two-semester module a student will be expected to be able to demonstrate:

1. a foundation knowledge of concepts and methodologies of political philosophy and their application to example political settings and situations
2. an examination of how differing polities use, adapt or reject western ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism and socialism
3. a basic understanding of political vocabulary and an ability to articulate ideas and concepts about the social, economic, historical and cultural contexts in politics and political philosophy

ASSESSMENTS

REFERENCES in your Assessments must be formatted in FOOTNOTE format and a BIBLIOGRAPHY must be included. Instructions for this format can be found in the Programme Handbook.

This module will be assessed by your summative assignment, a 2,000 word essay and, for PO1103 students ONLY, by a summative two hour exam.

This assessment will be supported by formative work in class (in the form of teaching and discussion on key concepts and the assigned reading) and outside of class (in the form of the required reading you will be set for each week of the course).

 

Summative Essay

Due: 11/05/20 (Monday of Assessment Period, Week 2)
Assessment Type: Essay

Word Length: 2,000

Percentage: This assignment will count for 100% of the module grade for RT1507 students and 25% of the (two semester) module grade for PO1103 students.

Essay:

Answer one of the following questions:

1. The philosopher Robin James has suggested that ‘Who cleans up after other people?’ is a more important question for political philosophy than ‘Who governs?’ Discuss this claim, with reference to AT LEAST TWO of the thinkers we have studied this semester.
2. In ‘A Black Feminist Statement’ (1977), the Combahee River Collective wrote, ‘If Black women were free it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.’ Discuss this claim, with reference to AT LEAST TWO of the thinkers we have studied this semester.
3. In 1987 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, ‘There is no such thing as society.’ Discuss this claim in relation to texts by AT LEAST TWO of the thinkers we have studied this semester.
4. Pick TWO of the thinkers we have studied during this course. Compare and contrast their discussion of ONE of the following key ideas: a) freedom, b) private property, c) the social contract or d) government.

Feedback due back: 01/06/20

 

Assessment 3: Exam (PO1103 students only)

The exam will take place during assessment period.

Percentage: 50%

The exam will last two hours. It will be a seen exam, which means that you will be given a copy of the exam paper several weeks before your exam takes place, and will be allowed to take some notes into the exam with you. The exam paper will include three components:

First, an essay question covering material from both S1 and S2
Second, you will be asked to answer two questions based on S1 material
Third, you will be asked to comment on three extracts from S2 texts.

 

NB: ALL WRITTEN ASSESSMENTS SHOULD BE SUBMITTED ONLINE VIA THE MODULE PAGE. Instructions on how to submit via the Module Page are available on the TRE/PRE Homepage and in the Programme Handbook.

Marking criteria can also be found, listed by level, in the Programme Handbook.

 

LECTURE OVERVIEW

WEEK 1. Introduction to Political Philosophy/The Social Contract

WEEK 2. The Social Contract/The Sexual Contract

WEEK 3. The Sexual Contract/The Racial Contract

WEEK 4. The Racial Contract/Private Property

WEEK 5. Private Property/Communism

WEEK 6. Communism/Freedom

WEEK 7. ENRICHMENT WEEK

WEEK 8. Freedom/Mutual Aid

WEEK 9. Mutual Aid/Friends and Enemies

WEEK 10. Friends and Enemies/Resistance

WEEK 11: Resistance/Control

WEEK 12: Control/Summative Assignment Preparation

 

TOPIC LIST

WEEK 1: Introduction to Political Philosophy/The Social Contract

In the first half of this class we will discuss the nature of political philosophy, and consider the ways in which our political experiences and imagination are shaped by three of the key factors which will inform our discussions of the texts we study over the rest of the course: race, gender and class. In the second half we will prepare for week 2 by introducing the early modern political philosopher Thomas Hobbes and his notion of the social contract.

Required Reading

Alana Lentin, ‘Racism, history, and politics’ in Racism: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008), 1-31.

Mary Hawkesworth, ‘Sex, Gender and Sexuality: From Naturalized Presumption to Analytical Categories’ in The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2013).

Charles Umney, ‘Alien Powers: Class in Marxist Thought’ in Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st Century Britain(London: Pluto Press, 2018), 22-39.

 

WEEK 2. The Social Contract/The Sexual Contract

In the first half of this class we will discuss the required reading extract from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. In the second half we will prepare for week 3 by introducing the contemporary political philosopher Carol Pateman and her argument that Hobbes’ social contract was really a sexual contract i.e. an agreement between men to exclude women from access to political power.

Required Reading

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan edited by Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Introduction, Chapters 13-14, 16 and 18, pages 81-84, 183-201, 217-222, 228-239.

Further Reading

Katherine Bootle Attie, ‘Re-membering the Body Politic: Hobbes and the Construction of Civic Immortality’ in ELH75.3 (2008), 497-530.

Leo Strauss, ‘The Moral Basis’ in The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis,translated by Elsa M Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 6-29.

 

WEEK 3. The Sexual Contract/ The Racial Contract

In the first half of this class we will discuss the required reading extract from Carol Pateman’s The Sexual Contract. In the second half we will prepare for week 3 by introducing the contemporary political philosopher Charles Mills and his argument that Hobbes’ social contract was really a racial contract i.e. an agreement between white people to exclude non-white people from access to political power.

Required Reading

Carol Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 1-39.

Further Reading

Elisabetta Galeotti, ‘Rereading a Classic Text’ in History of the Present 3.2 (2013), 198-204.

Robyn Marasco, ‘Terms and Conditions’ in History of the Present 3.2 (2013), 205-211.

Jack Jackson, ‘The Misfortune of Silence’ in History of the Present 3.2 (2013, 212-219.

 

WEEK 4. The Racial Contract/Private Property

In the first half of this class we will discuss the required reading extract from Charles Mills’ The Racial Contract. In the second half we will prepare for week 5 by introducing the early modern political philosopher John Locke and the creation of private property as a foundational institution of modern Western societies.

Required Reading

Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 9-40.

Further Reading

Anthony Bogues, ‘Race and Revising Liberalism’ in Charles Mills, Radical Theory, Caribbean Reality: Race, Class and Social Domination (Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2010), 222-229.

Lewis R Gordon, ‘Contracting White Normativity’ in Charles Mills, Radical Theory, Caribbean Reality: Race, Class and Social Domination (Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2010), 213-221.

Clinton Hutton, ‘Opening up the Intellectual Closet of Modern Western Political Philosophy’ in Charles Mills, Radical Theory, Caribbean Reality: Race, Class and Social Domination (Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2010), 230-237.

Charles Mills, ‘The Racial Contract as Methodology’ in From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield: 2003), 219-250.

 

WEEK 5. Private Property/Communism

In the first half of this class we will discuss the required reading extracts from John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. In the second half we will prepare for week 5 by introducing the 19th century political theorist Karl Marx and the idea of communism.

Required Reading

Locke, John Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Book 2,chapters 2, 5 and 8.

Further Reading

Barbara Arneil, ‘Colonialism: Locke’s Theory of Property’ in Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism(Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 132-167.

John Dunn, Locke: A Very Short Introduction(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Carol M Rose, ‘Possession as the Origin of Property’ in The University of Chicago Law Review 52.1 (1985), 73-88.

 

WEEK 6. Communism/Freedom

In the first half of this class we will discuss Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel’s The Communist Manifesto. In the second half we will prepare for week 8 by introducing the 19th century liberal political philosopher J S Mill and the liberal account of political freedom.

Required Reading

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm (Links to an external site.)

Further Reading

David Leopold, ‘Marx, Engels and Other Socialisms’ in The Cambridge Companion to the Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Jonathan Wolff ‘Class, History and Capital’ in Why Read Marx Today? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 48-99.

 

WEEK 7: ENRICHMENT WEEK: No Lecture

 

WEEK 8. Freedom/Mutual Aid

In the first half of this class we will discuss the required reading extracts from J S Mill’s On Liberty. In the second half we will introduce the anarchist thinker Errico Malatesta and the anarchist account of mutual aid.

Required Reading

Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty (Harmandsworth: Penguin, 1982), chapters 1 and 4.

Further Reading

Gertrude Himmelfarb, ‘Liberty of Action: Individuality’ and ‘The Limits of Individuality and Society’ in On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1990), 57-91 and 92-108.

John Skorupski, ‘Liberty’ in John Stuart Mill (London: Routledge, 1989), 337-388.

 

WEEK 9. Mutual Aid/Friends and Enemies

In the first half of this class we will discuss the required reading, Errico Malatesta’s ‘Anarchy’. In the second half we will prepare for week 10 by introducing the German jurist, political theorist and Nazi party member Carl Schmitt, and his argument that the political is defined by the distinction between friends and enemies.

Required Reading

Errico Malatesta, Anarchy (London: Freedom Press, 1974). Translated by Vernon Richards. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy

Further Reading

Ruth Kinna, ‘Traditions’ in The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism (London: Pelican, 2019).

Vernon Richards, “Malatesta’s Relevance for Anarchists Today” in Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta(London: PM Press, 2015).

 

WEEK 10. Friends and Enemies/Resistance

In the first half of this class we will discuss the required reading extracts from Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political. In the second half we will prepare for week 9 by introducing the psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary Frantz Fanon and political philosophical debates about the legitimacy of violence.

Required Reading

Carl Schmitt, Parts 1-3 of The Concept of the Political (Chicago, University of Chicago Press), 19-37.

Further Reading

William Rasch, ‘Introduction: The Primacy of the Political’ in Sovereignty and Its Discontents (London: Birkbeck Law, 2004), 1-18.

Chantal Mouffe, ‘Pluralism and Democracy: Around Carl Schmitt’ in The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993), 117-133.

 

WEEK 11: Resistance/Control

In the first half of this class we will discuss the required reading extracts from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. In the second half we will prepare for week 12 by introducing two 20th century political philosophers – Michel Foucault and Paul B. Preciado – and their accounts of the shifting nature of state control of populations.

Required Reading

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin, 2001), 1-36.

Further Reading

Nigel C Gibson, ‘Violent Concerns’ in Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), 103-126.

Lewis Gordon, ‘“I Am from Martinique”’ in What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought(New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 19-46.

Lewis Gordon, ‘Tragic Revolutionary Violence and Philosophical Anthropology’ in Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 1995), 67-84.

David Macey, ‘Forgetting Fanon, Remembering Fanon’ in Frantz Fanon: A Biography (London: Verso, 2012), 1-30.

 

WEEK 12: Control/Summative Assignment Preparation

In the first half of this class we will discuss the required reading extracts from Foucault and Preciado. In the second half, we will go over the summative assignment and exam and discuss how best to approach them.

Required Reading

Michel Foucault, ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1991), 195-209

Paul B Preciado, ‘Packaging Disciplinary Architecture: Dialpak and the Invention of the Edible Panopticon’ in Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (New York City: Feminist Press, 2013), 191-215.

Further Reading

Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’ in October 59 (1992), 3-7.

Phillip Barker, ‘To Discipline and Subject’ in Michel Foucault: An Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 48-69.

Michel Foucault, ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1991), 195-228.

Kevin D Haggerty and Richard V Ericson, ‘The surveillant assemblage’ in British Journal of Sociology 51.4 (2000), 605-622.

Paul B Preciado, ‘Pharmacopower’ in Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era, translated by Bruce Benderson (New York City: Feminist Press, 2013), 144-235.

Ricky Tucker, ‘Pharmacopornography: An Interview with Beatriz Preciado’ in Paris Review, 4 December 2013. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/12/04/pharmacopornography-an-interview-with-beatriz-preciado/ [ (Links to an external site.)accessed 23 November 2017].

 

OVERALL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Colin Bird, An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Martin Cohen, Political Philosophy: From Plato to Mao (London: Pluto, 2001).

David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vols 1-2(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).