This course offers a survey of political theory in the West. We will examine some of the persistent dilemmas of politics and the attempts of several canonical political theorists to respond to them: Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche. In each case, we will attend to the particular crises these theorists addressed in their work, such as imperialism, the European wars of religion, the English Civil War, the French Revolution, and industrial capitalism, as well as the broader philosophical and political issues they continue to pose to us now.

Students enroll in GOVT 1615.