PLT2770

Culture, politics and vision: aspects of European political thought

Proposed to be offered next in 1999

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

Preliminary reading

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