Politics is, in the first instance, about power and action, which are generally deemed necessary to the edification of individual and collective good life. Political theory broadly understood is an inquiry into the nature and major features of individual and collective good life. The nature and purpose of political theory are said to be best understood by an introductory examination of the ways in which political thinkers conceive of power relations and address the issue of the practical implications of the organization of power relations. This type of examination constitutes the core of the course. In particular, the course is primarily about a number of visions of politics, past and present, considered on their own merits. Some of these visions have had a significant impact on national and international politics, while others did not, or not directly. We study them in order to critically understand how the masters of political theory formulated their arguments, what is really at stake in their statements, and possibly whether, and to what extent, what they thought is relevant to us.

 

Format
The first session begins with expository and exegetical work for which the students have read a classical or contemporary text (to be found in the textbook) assigned for the session. The instructor draws attention to some of the key points in the text, difficulties of interpretation, historical circumstances of composition, subsequent influence on other thinkers, and so on. This is followed by a discussion with student participation. The emphasis here is on the knowledge of a particular political theory.

For the second session each student prepares a short paper, two to three pages long, based on the same text, the Monday discussion, and his/her own reflections. The topic of each paper is announced in advance. Students are asked to read out their paper during the session and answer questions posed by the instructor or other students. The Friday sessions are designed to help students develop the insight and skills required to deal with normative problems of politics and to assess the merits of particular political theories. The format of the Friday sessions may vary; for instance, the presentations may be followed by a ‘Socratic debate’ focused on one or more particular papers, or one student may be asked to respond extensively to another student’s paper. What is important in this connection is that students learn to make a link between the theory under discussion and present-day social and political issues, helping to answer the question: How relevant today is the political theory in question?