Course syllabus

 

 

 

Tuesday and Friday, 9-10am, OGGB (Business School) room 115

15 points

Lecturers:                                                                 

Associate Professor Kathy Smits (Course convenor)                                                

Phone: 373 7599, ext. 87576 

E-mail:      k.smits@auckland.ac.nz 

Office hours: Tuesdays, 11-12 noon and Mondays, 2-3pm and by appointment

Office:  HSB room 506

 

Professor John Morrow

E-mail: j.morrow@auckland.ac.nz

 

Tutors 

Nicolas Pirsoul npir278@aucklanduni.ac.nz Office Hour: Tuesday 2-3, 9 Grafton Road (enter, then knock on the first door on the left)

Vincent Fang (zfan977@aucklanduni.ac.nz  Office Hour: Monday 12-1 pm, Room 941, HSB 201E

Celestyna Galicki  cgal034@aucklanduni.ac.nz Office hours: Friday 10-11 am, Room 905, HSB 201E

Laura Bunting lbun546@aucklanduni.ac.nz Office Hour: Friday 12-1, HSB 201E, Room 714

 

 

 

Course Description and Rationale

 

When we think about political issues, either in the classroom or the wider public world, we are using and referring to a range of ideas about politics, which have been developed in the western political tradition since the ancient Greeks.  The fundamental questions we ask about politics – how should society be governed, what is justice and how should it be implemented between individuals, groups and states, where should the distinction between public and private life fall – are all questions which have been defined for us by thinkers in a historical tradition in which we are the latest participants.  The ways in which we ask and answer these questions, and what counts as relevant and important to us in doing so depend upon our own social and historical position as readers and thinkers, as well as on the ways in which these concepts have been discussed in the past.  In this course, we will focus on the relationship between individuals and the state, the meanings of justice, liberty and equality, the basis of democracy, the rights of women, and the limits to political authority and rights of resistance.

 

Course Objectives

 

This course has 5 principal objectives.  By the end of the course, you should:

 1.  Be familiar with the main patterns in the development of western political thinking up until the 20^th century

 2.  Have the skills required to read and understand texts in political philosophy written in different historical periods, and in different styles

 3.  Understand the major political ideas of the thinkers we have studied

 4.  Understand the relationship between these ideas and the contexts in which they were produced

 5.  Be able to reflect critically upon your own social and political views, by recognizing the historical paradigms from which these are derived.