POLS2120: Foundations of Political Theory

class participation/attendance 10%
exam 40% (3x500-word essay questions)
essay 50% (3000 words)

This course was an intensive winter course, and has been run in the past as both a winter and semester-long course. This is a political philosophy or political theory course, that focuses on the oldest Western political thinkers and their ideas. We thought about why these thinkers think this way, and how this might line up with contemporary society. In addition to reading these old works, we also did read some modern reviews on these works (these were the 'classic chats', which was more of a tutorial discussion format).

The texts we studied this year were (only in selected parts, not the full texts):
- Homer’s Iliad
- Herodotus: Histories
- Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War (including the Funeral Oration, Mytilene Debate, Melian Dialogue)
- Sophocles: Antigone (I really liked this text!)
- Plato: Apology
- Plato: Republic (this one we actually read the whole thing...fair to say it was quite a handful)
- Aristotle: Rhetoric
- Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics
- Aristotle: Politics
In the past, this course has had students study Machiavelli and such, but we only stopped at Aristotle, especially as this was an intensive course. The texts are pretty hard to understand (I got lost and confused many times), but there are resources such as Sparknotes that can help. Going into this course, I really did not know much (at all) about philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, so it was good to get to know their most famous works and ideas, and yeah, let's just say I have quite an interesting view on one of them .

This course is supposed to be a politics or political science course (or political philosophy/theory), but at times I felt like it was a literature course, so keep in mind when writing your exam and essay to think of it from a political view and how these texts explain political phenomena rather than a literary one. What you will find, however, is that many of these texts actually do have things quite in common with modern day society and their ideas actually have been quite influential. While it can be interesting, reading a lot over an intensive period can get boring.

Exam:
The Exam was 3 500-word essay questions about any of the 3 texts studied. There was a question for each text so we just got to pick our ‘favourite’ texts. It was offered as a take-home exam this time.

Recommendation:
I would recommend this course if you’re interested in the foundations of political theory and philosophy, but personally, I might have been more interested in later political philosophers such as Marx. I would also recommend if you want to do a winter course, because there aren’t many available. However, there are many situations where it is quite difficult to understand - especially because I do not have much knowledge on philosophy or political theory, as many students taking this course have done other courses in similar fields which may have helped them better.

I believe so, but he did not use slides

Prof John Uhr + Dr Will Bosworth (runs the classic chats)

no

2.5 Out of 5

the official textbook is Readings in Classical Political Thought, edited by Peter J. Steinberger
Personally, I would recommend it as it is "only" $50, but it is up to you. Most texts (except 1 or 2) we study are from this textbook, and there will be quite a few texts in the textbook not covered in this course (but it's good if you want to read them!), but you can also find copies of the text in libraries etc., however, this textbook is edited so the readings are easier to understand than say 'original' translations, and the lecturer does use the textbook when explaining

intensive winter course run over 2 days (Tues + Thurs) each week for 3 weeks
10-3 each day, with a one hour break in between
~45-60mins in the second half of each day (except final day) was dedicated to the discussions, known as 'classic chats'

winter 2017

TBA