Political Theory and Public Law

Course Description

Course Description

The scholar Francis Fukuyama suggested in 1989 that the West had arrived at the "end of history" – the telos at which history aims, with a political and economic regime so satisfying to corporal needs and wants that existential yearnings would be suffocated and, lounging in tubs of butter, modern citizens would want no change. And yet: here we are, when in India, Europe, South America, and the U.S., populist movements – uprisings? –destroy the political and economic consensus that defined the end of history, a consensus instantiated in free markets and representative democracy. Why did Fukuyama (and Hegel) think history might end? Were they wrong? What animates politics after the end of history? The class will investigate these questions by engaging the history of political thought, ancient and modern, and the circumstances of contemporary American politics.

Course Description: 

Can we defend the value of democracy against serious and thoughtful criticism? Using a combination of classic and contemporary texts, this course encourages students to think rigorously about one of their most basic political values. It examines the origins of democratic theory in ancient Athenian political practice and the normative and practical criticisms of more contemporary thinkers. What makes politics "democratic?" What features distinguish the democratic regime from other regimes? What is democracy supposed to reflect or achieve? And what kinds of concerns about democracy did ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle raise? How (and why) did early modern and Enlightenment thinkers relocate the grounds for preferring democracy to other regimes?