Academic Life

Phronesis: A Program in Politics and Ethics

The Phronesis Minor: Fall 2008 Courses

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso.

The Roman Republic

Course & Class Num: CLAS 3341H, 32526

Time & Location: TTH 10:00 - 11:30, 58 L

Instructor: Richard H. Armstrong

This course examines the history, ideology, triumphs and pathologies of the Roman Republic, from its legendary inception in the sixth century BC through its demise in the first century BC. We will work with both primary sources (such as Livy, Polybius, Sallust, Cicero, Caesar, Plutarch) and secondary materials, in order to understand not just how the Republic evolved and functioned, but also how it spoke about itself and the kind of political discourses it generated.

Throughout this investigation, we will also consider how this Republic and its cult of civic virtue and martial valor have influenced later political thought, from the Renaissance, the founding of the United States and the French Revolution, and the advent of Italian Fascism. This kind of consideration is essential to opening up the historical significance of the Roman Republic well beyond a restricted interest in the ancient world. For centuries, political theorists have tried to learn from the Republic's rise as well as its downfall and descent into world monarchy under the emperors. We will discuss which political lessons were drawn from Roman history, particularly as they pertain to: a) social class divisions and the sharing of power, b) the compatibility of militarism and imperialism with Republican freedom, c) the role and reality of civic virtue in a free society, d) organic versus written "constitutions," and finally e) the dynamics of populist politics in relation to "great men" of history.

Classics in the History of Ethics

Course & Class Num: PHIL 3358H, 27174

Time & Location: MWF 9:00 - 10:00, 212J L

Instructor: Iain P. D. Morrison

In this course I will take on one major ethical work from each of the following three thinkers: Spinoza, Hume and Nietzsche. These figures attempt (in consecutive centuries) to come to terms with ethics in the post-Christian intellectual arena. As we move through the semester we will get caught up in the following kinds of questions. Is God the foundation for our ethical commitments? If so, then how can we reconcile this with our rational/scientific insights into the nature of the world? If not, then what is it that makes us moral creatures? Or, are we moral creatures at all? How might our morality be naturalistically understood?

Liberalism and Its Critics

Course & Class Num: POLS 3342H, 32467

Time & Location: TTH 2:30 - 4:00, 212J L

Instructor: Dennis Rasmussen

We in the contemporary West tend to take liberal democratic principles and values almost for granted, but these principles and values have been subjected to a variety of radical critiques since their emergence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this course we will examine the theoretical foundations of liberalism (Locke) and radical critiques of both the left (Rousseau, Marx and Engels) and right (Rousseau again, Burke, Nietzsche). In addition to exploring the political implications of the various conceptions of nature, human nature, justice, freedom, and history found in the works of these thinkers, we will also use their arguments to reflect on the health or illness of contemporary liberal democratic theory and practice.

American Political Thought

Course & Class Num: POLS 3349H, 29022

Time & Location: TTH 8:30 - 10:00, 212P L

Instructor: Jeremy D. Bailey

According to Alexis de Tocqueville, Americans were born equal without becoming so. In this course, we will examine American political thought with an eye to Tocqueville's famous argument that equality is the most important characteristic of American political and social arrangements. At the same time, we will attempt to test his prediction that Americans, and maybe all democrats, would come to love equality more than liberty and thus create the possibility for a new kind of despotism. Particular attention will be paid to the American Founding, as well as to important attempts at re-founding. Texts will include works of literature, political thought, and political protest.

Recent Islamic Political Thought

Course & Class Num: POLS 4396H, 32479

Time & Location: TTH 1:00 - 2:30, TBA

Instructor: Gregory Weiher

In the late eighteenth century, the French invaded Egypt and occupied it for three years. This began a period during which Middle Easterners were unavoidably confronted with Western power and culture. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Islamic political thought was dominated by what are variously called the Islamic reformers or the Islamic modernists - Jalal al Din al Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and Rashid Rida. While remaining committed to Islam, the Islamic reformers favored incorporating Western elements - science, reason, constitutional government - into Islamic societies. This movement, however, took place at the elite level of these societies. The reformers were never able to win over the Islamic masses, nor were they able to propose a specific synthesis between reason and revelation. Their influence began to wane in the 1930s, and by the time of the creation of Israel (1948), their day was over. There followed a twenty year interval during which secular regimes dominated the political landscape. Arab socialism, as manifested most famously in Nasr's Egypt, rejected Islam except to pay lip service to it in order to pacify traditional elements of society. With the defeat in the 1967 war against Israel, secularism was discredited. Those who had been calling for the revival of Islam - Maududi in India/Pakistan beginning in the thirties, Sayyid Qutb in Egypt during the 50s and 60s, and Khomeini in Iran in the 60s and 70s - received a more receptive hearing from peoples who rejected Western political models, whether liberal and democratic or socialist. For Maududi, Qutb, and Khomeini, Islam was above all a political ideology that called for the foundation of an Islamic state. This course examines the work of Afghani, Abduh, Rida, Maududi, Qutb, Khomeini, and Ali Shariati in order to relate Islamic reformism and Islamic radicalism to Western modes of political thought and to each other.

Frames of Modernity II: Exile and Literature

Course & Class Num: WCL 4352H, 33429

Time & Location: T 2:30 - 5:30, 212S L

Instructor: Robert D. Zaretsky

The theme of exile in literature is as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible. Yet, during the twentieth century-a century convulsed by revolutions, world wars, and genocides-something happens to this theme. That "something" will be this course's focus. For practical and historical reasons, France will serve as our common ground. We will give particular attention to Albert Camus, whose life and work straddled France and his native Algeria. Other writers we will read-all of whom lived as exiles in France-will be the Czech novelist Milan Kundera, the Polish poets Zbigniew Herbert and Adam Zagajewski, the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, the American writers Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, and the Russian-French novelist Irène Némirovsky.