Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Synopsis This subject introduces honours and/or graduate students to a strand of selected topics in the history of political thought. These topics include the nature of epic or grand theories of politics and the relation of political theories to other (moral, religious, scientific, technical, metaphysical) forms of thinking. The subject has two principal aims. Firstly, it will provide a survey of the ideas of Socrates, Plato, Machiavelli and Nietzsche on themes such as knowledge and power, political change and cultural identity, social structure and political institutions, ethics and politics. Secondly, the subject explores the functions of the intellectual history of political thought within the wider ambit of political science and social theory.
Assessment Written (4500 words): 50% + Examination (3 hours): 50%