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POLI 355: Political Philosophy: Plato to Machiavelli (Rev. C3) Report a Broken Link

This course provides an overview of classical political thinking about the best life for humankind and the best ways to live together as a community in which members share similar aspirations. The course is divided into two parts; seven units form Part 1 and six units make up Part 2. Part 1 addresses the main similarities and differences in the political ideas of Plato and Aristotle, and forms two-thirds of the course content. These thinkers, arguably, have been the most intellectually significant as well as the most influential philosophical thinkers then or since. Part 2 discusses a handful of philosophers who embroidered in interesting ways on some of the earlier ideas about politics.

Required Readings

Unit 1

Wolin, Sheldon S. “Political Philosophy and Philosophy.” Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960. 1–27.

Read Chapter 1.
Thiele, Beverly. “Vanishing Acts in Social and Political Thought: Tricks of the Trade.” Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory. Boston: Northeastern UP, 2001. 30–43.

Unit 2

Okin, Susan Moller. “Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family.” Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory. Edited by Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman, 1991. 11–31.

Unit 5

Saxonhouse, Arlene. “Aristotle: Defective Males, Hierarachy and the Limits of Politics.” Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory. Edited by Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman. Cambridge England: Polity, 1991. 32–52.

Unit 7

Stiehm, Judith Hicks. “The Unit of Political Analysis: Our Aristotelian Hangover.” Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Edited by Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1983. 31–43.

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Unit 8

Weithman, Paul. “Augustine’s Political Philosophy.” Edited by Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann. The Cambridge Companion to Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 234–252.

Read Chapter 16.

Unit 9

John, Helen J. “Hildegard of Bingen: A New Twelfth Century-Woman Philosopher?” Hypatia 7, 1 (1992): 115–123.