Week 1:
Tuesday: Introduction to the course
Thursday: Shipwrecked
The social contract
Week 2: Hobbes on authority
Tuesday: ‘Solitary, poor, nasty...’: Life in a state of nature
Thursday: Absolute authority? Hobbes on government
Week 3: Locke and liberalism
Tuesday: Property and democracy
Thursday: Religion and toleration
Week 4: Rousseau’s democratic contract
Tuesday: Inequality, domination and the problem of freedom
Thursday: The ‘general will’: Democratic or totalitarian?
Week 5:
Preparation of first written assignment
Criticisms and extensions
Week 6: Mill on freedom
Tuesday: Individual freedom and not harming others
Thursday: Mill’s feminism
Week 7: Marx’s communist critique
Tuesday: Capitalism and communism
Thursday: Marx’s critique of liberalism
Week 8: Kant’s cosmopolitanism
Tuesday: Kant’s vision of perpetual peace
Thursday: Global poverty and global democracy
Week 9:
Preparation of second written assignment
Topics in politics
Week 10: Equality
Tuesday: Equality of what? Rawls on equal opportunity and redistribution
Thursday: Climate equality
Week 11: Freedoms
Tuesday: Paternalism and harm
Thursday: Which freedoms? Surveillance, gay marriage, prostitution, and drugs
Week 12: Religion
Tuesday: Religion in politics? Rawls vs. the inclusivists
Thursday: Political Catholicism and Islam
Week 13: War and terrorism
Tuesday: Terrorism, torture and preventive war
Thursday: Humanitarian interventions
Week 14:
Preparation of final written assignment