A weekly seminar on political thought from the Renaissance to the French Revolution. Early modern political theorist, typically including Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau.
The theme for Spring 2025 "Social Contracts".
PS 212B is a survey graduate seminar course in political theory introducing graduate students to major texts in the history of early modern political thought (roughly 1500-1800). The theme for this year’s seminar will be ‘social contracts.’ The idea of the social contract has provided a vital heuristic in the modern social sciences and philosophy to explain how collectively beneficial social cooperation can be possible in a world populated by self-interested humans. The course will study the major textual sources of the social contract tradition in major works by Grotius, Pufendorf, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau. The course will also introduce students to major ancient and medieval scholastic sources of contract law. If time permits, the seminar may also study Marxist and feminist critiques of social contract theory and attempts to apply the social contract tradition to ‘contractualism’ in moral philosophy.