History of Political Ideas 2100-ERASMUS-HPID

This course will introduce students into the key ideas, thinkers and texts of the Western tradition of political thought. It adopts a chronological approach, beginning with Greek origins of political ideas and covering the most important ideational developments in antiquity, Middle Ages and the modern era, concluding with the political aspects of F. Nietzsche’s philosophy.

The chronological approach does mean a mere linear reconstruction of major ideas - the course will attempt to address - in a comparative manner - a few fundamental questions, dilemmas and controversies of the Western political philosophy and theory, such as:

1. The problem of knowledge (considered also as the basic problem of legitimacy) - what do we know?, in what way? (revelation, faith, experience, reason, different types of rationality).
2. Human nature and the nature and character of social and political institutions.
3. The question of justice and the social aspects of human conduct.
4. The problem of power and authority.

This course does not require any previous specific knowledge of political ideas (though it would be very helpful). However, participants are expected to be familiar with fundamental political and social concepts, they should also know the basics of the history of Western civilization.

Topics (classes):

1. Ancient political thought – Greek beginnings
- The concept of polis, Athenian democracy
- Sophists and Socrates (relativism vs. rationalism & ethical intellectualism)
- Plato (theory of ideas, ideal state, critique of democracy)
- Aristotle (origins of the state, the best political order, Plato and Aristotle - similarities and differences)
2. Political dimension of Christian Thought
- Early Christianity, its understanding of power and social order
- St. Augustine
- St. Thomas Aquinas (comparison with St. Augustine)
3. Early Modern Political Thought
- Thomas More (utopianism, anti-utopias)
- Niccolò Machiavelli (various interpretations, “Prince” and “Discourses” – are these works consistent?, Renaissance republicanism)
- Thomas Hobbes (human nature, the state of nature, social contract, understanding of authority)
4. Enlightenment
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (the state of nature, critique of civilization & progress, social contract, general will vs. the will of all, understanding of freedom)
- Immanuel Kant (liberal motifs)
5. Liberal thought (aristocratic and classical period)
- John Locke (the state of nature, social contract and vision of authority – in comparison with Hobbes)
- John Stuart Mill (utilitarian justification of the liberal order)
6. Two faces of early conservatism
- Joseph de Maistre (French Revolution, the problem of change, human nature, critique of rationalism)
- Edmund Burke (in comparison with de Maistre)
7. Socialism and communism
- Karl Marx (“scientific” vs. “utopian” socialism, theory of history and socio-economic development, justification of revolution)
8. Political aspects of F. Nietzsche’s philosophy (critique of Christianity, liberalism and democracy, question of nihilism, death of God, Übermensch, Nietzsche and fascism)

In case of topics 1-6, each of them will be discussed during two consecutive classes.