PSIR501 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THEORY
Course Content
This course will make an in-depth study of some of the key developments and personalities in social and political theory of the modern era. We cover thinkers who offer accounts of how society can be best organised and administered. This is often an urgent question since societies do exist and do have to be ordered and administered. And yet we encounter inevitably deeper-lying questions also as to how society might be organised and administered, not only effectively and efficiently, but so arranged as to do justice to human beings - provide security and freedom, and so on. This causes us to enquire in turn as to the nature of humans and their societies, which raises further questions, such as how it is humans are capable of living in society at all. Are we selfish or altruistic? Are our natures fixed or malleable? Do humans make society or does society somehow make humans? These are some of the fascinating themes to be covered. We range from Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the early contract theorists through to the rise of German reason in the 19th century, post-Enlightenment criticism, to more recent 20th century postmodernist arguments. We shall identify some key topics and principles which seem to encapsulate the concerns of political and social speculation, together with the practical political and social problems of the age in question.
