PLT3140 - Progress and Despair: Modern Political Ideologies and Theories

Leader: Michael Janover

Offered

Clayton First semester 2007 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit explores some crucial currents of thought on the nature of modernity, community, 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, Habermas and Foucault. Our key focus will be how these thinkers have characterised and imagined modernity in forms of utopian ideal and dystopian counter-ideal.

Assessment

Tutorial presentation (500 words): 10%
Tutorial participation: 10%
Essay (2500 words): 50%
Examination (1.5 hours): 30%
Students enrolled in the unit at third-year level will be expected to show greater theoretical sophistication in the essay and will be required to answer a question, in the examination, drawn from a section devoted to more complex and/or comparative questions.

Contact hours

2 hours (1 x 1 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour tutorial) per week

Prerequisites

A first-year sequence in Politics or permission.

Prohibitions

COS2140, COS3140