Philosophizing Politics and Economics: An Introduction to PPE

Catalog description

Like most subjects, politics and economics started as offshoots of philosophy: famous economists such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and famous political theorists such as Hobbes and Locke, were all philosophers. Political science and economics have since become disciplines in their own right, each helping us understand key aspects of society. But perhaps something is lost when these are separated from the philosophical point of view... In this course, we take on that point of view and seek to understand politics and economics, and think about how our politics and economics should be organized, by approaching these subjects and their intersection as philosophers. This doesn’t mean we will only be reading philosophers. But I am a philosopher, and so our study of the intersection of these subjects will be done in a philosophical manner.