Monash University Arts Undergraduate Handbook, 1997

PLT2770/3770

Culture, politics and vision: aspects of European political thought

Proposed to be offered next in 1998

Michael Janover

8 points
* 3 hours per week
* Clayton

Objectives On successful completion of this subject students should be able to recognise and analyse concepts and debates in the history of political thought; describe and discuss influences of ancient Greek political and philosophical experience and ideas on the development of European political thought; critically discuss the enterprise, itself, of tracing `history', `influences', `development' in political thinking.

Synopsis This subject investigates the history of Western political thought from ancient Greek philosophical questioning and public rhetoric through to the seventeenth-century emergence of liberalism. The subject studies the development of political ideas with close reference to their cultural and historical contexts; and it questions the nature and significance of this kind of study of ideas in their contexts. Political ideas of Homeric Greece, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke are set into the larger frame of philosophical, artistic, scientific and religious ideas and activities.

Assessment second year Tutorial presentation and participation: 10%
* Essay (3000 words): 50%
* Examination (3 hours): 40%

Assessment third year Tutorial presentation and participation: 10%
* Essay (3000 words): 50%
* Examination (3 hours): 40%
* Students enrolled at third-year level will be required to answer a question, in the examination, drawn from a section devoted to more complex and/or comparative questions.

Preliminary texts

Knox B Backing into the future Norton, 1994

Plamenatz J Man and society vol. 1, Longman, 1992

Recommended texts

Irwin T Classical thought OUP, 1989

Saxonhouse A Women in western political thought Praeger, 1985

Wiser J Political philosophy Prentice-Hall, 1983

Handbook Contents | Faculty Handbooks | Monash University