Dimensions of American Civic Thought

Catalog description

This course is devoted the understanding of American civic life through the study of the central documents and key authors of our political tradition. American authors have been quite self-conscious in addressing themselves to perennial questions of justice and the common good. They joined long-standing debates about the relation between rights and duties, the nature of revolution, the possibility of republican self-government, the role of commerce in a free society, and the nature and extent of religious freedom. Students will join these authors and enter these debates to recover the logic of the various arguments made therein. Students will come away from the course with an understanding of: (1) the idea of natural rights; (2) the architecture of the Constitution and the ground of republican self-government; (3) the benefits of and challenges presented by commerce in a free society; (4) the roles played by slavery and race in the history of our republic; and (5) how our political tradition has met the challenge of religious freedom. IC. PA-4A. CAS-B.