Shakespeare and Political Ethics (SNF Paideia Program Course)

Catalog description

This seminar explores the question of Shakespeare as a political theorist by reading six of his plays, examining them in conjunction with the work of prominent theorists of politics, including Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Nietzsche, Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, and Hannah Arendt. Our goal will be to link the dramatization of politics to its theorization, so that we can better understand and interrogate key institutions and practices of modern citizenship and the modern state. We will pay special attention to such topics as the nature of charisma and charismatic authority, competing models of popular power, the varieties of apoliticism and their significance, the moral status of thinking, the role of fortune in political affairs, a critical appraisal of the will to know, and the idea of natural law. The six Shakespeare plays to be read as part of the course are: Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Richard II, Othello, and The Tempest. This course is open to both graduate students and undergraduates.