Modern Political Thought

Catalog description

This course will be devoted to a study of classical works of modern political philosophy in the Western tradition. How did the early modern political philosophers try to make a new beginning by turning to a realism they thought missing in the ancients? How did they go about defending individual rights in society on that basis? We will examine Machiavelli’s introduction of this approach, and its development in the political theories of thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.