PLT2140

Progress and despair: modern political ideologies and theories

Michael Janover

8 points - 3 hours per week - First semester - Clayton

Objectives On successful completion of this subject students should be able to analyse central debates in the history of modern social and political ideas; critically evaluate Enlightenment and Romantic views of community, liberty, reason and morality; and describe and discuss opposing conceptions of modernity from the eighteenth century to the present.

Synopsis This subject explores some crucial currents of thought on the nature of modernity, community, authority and liberty from the French Enlightenment until the present. The principal 'isms' of modern politics - liberalism, socialism, conservatism - are studied as both ideologies of progress and expressions of despair in the face of the massive changes in political; economic, intellectual and moral life of the last two centuries. Thinkers discussed will include Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Habermas and Foucault. Key themes are Enlightenment and progress; Romanticism and individuality; modernity and ethics.

Assessment Tutorial presentation (15-20 minutes) and participation: 10% - Essay (3000 words): 50% - Examination (3 hours): 40%

Recommended texts

Berlin I Against the current OUP, 1979
Berlin I The crooked timber of humanity Fontana, 1991
Bidiss M The age of the masses Penguin, 1977
Cassirer E The philosophy of enlightenment Princeton U P, 1951
Horkheimer M and Adorno T Dialectic of enlightenment Allen Lane, 1973
Saiedi N The birth of social theory University Press of America, 1993

Preliminary reading

Hawthorn G Enlightenment and despair CUP, 1976
Hobsbawm E The age of revolution New American Library 1962
Vincent A Modern political ideologies 2nd edn, Blackwell, 1995

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