Intro to Political Philosophy
Introduction to Political Philosophy What is politics and how should it be studied? Is there a best regime? A best way of life? How are these two things related, if at all? Can we gain knowledge of such topics? We will examine these questions through a study of the some or all of the following texts: Plato, Apology of Socrates, Republic; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics; Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War; St. Augustine, Confessions; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles; Machiavelli, The Prince; Hobbes, Leviathan; Locke, Second Treatise on Government; Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men; Marx, The Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology, Capital; and Weber, “Science as a Vocation.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy What is politics and how should it be studied? Is there a best regime? A best way of life? How are these two things related, if at all? Can we gain knowledge of such topics? We will examine these questions through a study of the some or all of the following texts: Plato, Apology of Socrates, Republic; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics; Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War; St. Augustine, Confessions; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles; Machiavelli, The Prince; Hobbes, Leviathan; Locke, Second Treatise on Government; Rousseau, Di …Read more
I personally really like the challenge - if you take this class be open to fumbling when answering questions but learning a lot. A TON of reading, pretty much at least 30 pages (and up to 80 pages) per class. Not all of it is covered in detail in class but you are expected to be quite familiar with all of it. Material is engaging if you engage with it. Makes you think about important topics like justice, human nature, the point of life, hard trade-offs, etc. Exams are essays, only three graded assignments so kind of intense pressure on those but preparation means a lot. Professor Dry's energy is great (sometimes aggressive but you know it's not ill-intentioned), his passion drives students and the class.
I personally really like the challenge - if you take this class be open to fumbling when answering questions but learning a lot. A TON of reading, pretty much at least 30 pages (and up to 80 pages) per class. Not all of it is covered in detail in class but you are expected to be quite familiar with all of it. Material is engaging if …Read more
You have to be comfortable being cold-called, and he likes to interrogate students answers. He also runs over time a lot, I wouldn't schedule anything 15 minutes or fewer after. The material can be really dense, but there are many valuable alternate resources on the internet. The mid-term was basically an info-dump in-class essay, and you will only get a total of 3 graded assignments in the course. If you really care about grades, I wouldn't advise you take it. However, if you are interested in the materials, you will find some of the lectures and discussion sessions helpful in unpacking parts of them you wouldn't have paid attention to.
You have to be comfortable being cold-called, and he likes to interrogate students answers. He also runs over time a lot, I wouldn't schedule anything 15 minutes or fewer after. The material can be really dense, but there are many valuable alternate resources on the internet. The mid-term was basically an info-dump in-class essay, an …Read more
Professor Dry is one of the most enthusiastic professors you can have at this school. He demands a lot from his students, but the class is super rewarding. Sometimes it can be hard to take notes because he goes in circles in his lectures. He will cold call.
This class is VERY reading heavy. Throughout the whole semester you go through about 8 books and other smaller readings. You will get cold called. The discussions were very helpful in understanding the material since the literature read is confusing a lot of the time. I took as a first semester freshman and I got a B in the course.
Difficult readings certainly. Fram has incredible enthusiasm for the course and that made the lectures incredibly interesting. Exams were difficult and you really had to have a thorough understanding of the readings to do well on them.