Course Timetable

Lectures for Term 1

Lecture 1. What is the history of Political Thought?
This will introduce you to the course and its content. Expectations, approaches and central themes will be explored. It will be a very inter-active session so bring your own ideas along with you? What do you want from the course? What do you expect? What do you dread?

Weeks 2-4:
Lectures on Plato and Aristotle

In this section of the course we will read and think about the foundational works of Plato and Aristotle. For most of the western tradition of political theory these works became the starting point for thinking about the relations between individuals and communities and between people and government. For each of the lectures you should read the 'set texts' as indicated. Also provided are further readings for exploration if you chose to write an essay on either or both of these thinkers.

Lecture 2. PLATO (427-347 BC) The Republic: Virtue, Justice and the State
Set Text: The Republic [c.370 BC], trans. A.D. Lindsay (2nd ed. 1976). Penguin. [888PLA] Essential sections (Page references are to the standard marginal paginations found in all editions): Bks I, II, III (412-7), IV, V (473-80), VI, VII (514-21, 532-4), VIII, X (608?21).

Lecture 3. ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC) Politics and the good life
Set Text: Politics [c.320s BC], trans S.Everson (1988): Cambridge Texts or Penguin. 888 ARI. The essential sections are, Politics: Bks I, II (1-6), III, IV (1-4,
9-14), V (1-2, 5, 8), VI (1, 5), VII (1-3, 7, 14).

Lecture 4. Community and Ethics in Classical Political theory
In this lecture we will look back on the first few weeks ideas and reflect thematically upon the central political concepts of antiquity: virtue, community, justice, prudence, ethics. The session will be an opportunity to pause and make comparative connections.

Weeks 5-7:
'What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?':
Augustine and Aquinas

In these lectures we are going to explore how Christian theology impacted upon the traditions of classical political theory. The starting point is Augustine's powerful critique of the vanity of human virtue in the City of God. Explicitly rejecting the writings of the Greeks and Romans, Augustine's work was importantly addressed to a dual audience: the pagan and the Christian. Reinterpreting the language of justice, virtue and peace through the theological understanding of a providential account of time, Augustine describes a negative role for political authority in the life of a Christian. If Augustine provided an account of the distinction between Christian values and political life, then the writings of Aquinas, indicate the tradition of accommodation between classical languages of politics and the Christian worldview. Premised upon a different conception of God and human nature, Aquinas created a Christian political theory that integrated grace and nature.

Lecture 5. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (AD 354-430) The City of God
Set Text: The City of God [AD 413-26] (Books 2-5, 8 and 11?22): Penguin. 189.2 AUG. Essential sections: Bks 4, 15, 19.

Lecture 6. THOMAS AQUINAS (c. 1225-74)
Set Text: Selected Political Writings, ed. A.P. d'Entrèves, 320.5 AQU
trans. J.G. Dawson (1959, 1987): Oxford (Blackwell) paperback. Or St Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (edited) P.Sigmund (Norton, 1988). Essential sections: Of Princely Government, Chs. 1-2, 5-6, 8, 10, 12-15; Summa, all the selections.

Lecture 7. Christian political theory
Like lecture 4. This session will be concerned to review and compare the various strands of order theory advanced by the Christian theorists. It will also address the survival of this political ideology throughout the period we are studying. Many of the newer thoughts developed from 1500 onwards were articulated against the backdrop of such ideas of natural order and Christian obedience.

Weeks 8-10:

In these lectures we will be dealing with the impact of the intellectual movement known as the Renaissance and spend some time thinking about how developments in ideas and media (such as the invention of the printing press) altered the nature of political theory. We start by examining the very different ideas of the Florentine thinker Machiavelli, and the Christian humanist Thomas More.

Lecture 8. The Renaissiance and Humanism
This session will attempt the impossible and attempt to establish an overview of the cultural and intellectual achievements of the remarkable flourishing of ideas, scholarship and the recovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance.

Lecture 9. NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
Set Texts: Machiavelli The Prince [1513], ed. Q. Skinner, trans. R. Price 320.5 MAC (Cambridge Texts, 1988). The Discourses [c.1516-18], ed. B. Crick (London, 1970): Penguin. 320.5 MAC. Bk I, chs. 1?18 (esp. ch. 2).

Lecture 10. THOMAS MORE
Set Texts: Thomas More Utopia [1516], ed. G.M. Logan and R.M. Adams (Cambridge Texts, 1989). 823 MOR. There is also an Everyman edition which has a sixteenth century translation. The Yale edition has an enormous amount of annotation which can be very useful for essay preparation.

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