Course Timetable

Lectures for Term 2

Lecture 1. Rights and Duties
As a preamble to engaging with the innovations of different theories of the state and political liberty, this session will explore some of the assumptions we all make about the language and vocabulary of human rights and liberty. Its objective will be to challenge any assumptions you might have about the legitimacy of 'rights'.

Weeks 2-3:
The impact of the Reformation

At the end of last term we engaged with the cultural impact of Humanism on the nature of political theory. The bulk of this terms work will involve a consideration of how the national religious upheavals known as the Reformations raised new and difficult issues for political writers. One of the key questions involved the matter of obligation. What were the limits of obligation to heretical kings? Why should the State be obeyed, and when might it be resisted and by whom?

Lecture 2. THE CALVINIST THEORY OF REVOLUTION c1520-1580
Set texts: Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority ed H. Hopfl (Cambridge Texts, 1990) 261.7 LUT. F.Hotman Francogallia 844 HOT, T.Beza The Right of Magistrates, Anon Vindica Contra Tyrannos in J.H. Franklin (ed) Constitutionalism and Resistance (1969) 321.8 CON.

Lecture 3. BODIN (1529/30-1596) Absolutism and sovereignty
Set Text: On Sovereignty, trans. J.H. Franklin (Cambridge Text, 1992): extracts from Six Books of the Commonwealth [1576]. 320.50942 FRA

Weeks 4-7:
The origins of liberalism

With the writings of Hobbes and Locke the key elements of a liberal political theory can be seen to have been created. Responding to the successive crises of political authority in the 1640s and 1680s each thinker developed a distinctive answer to the problems of the consensual origins of political legitimacy. In essence both men attempted to resolve the question of what made the state worth obeying.

Lecture 4 and 5. THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679) The Leviathan
Set Text: Leviathan, ed. R. Tuck (Cambridge Texts, 1991) 190 HOB. The new Hackett edition (ed. E. Curley is very useful (it has additional Latin and biographical materials). Essential sections: Lecture 4; read, Intro., Bk 1 (chs. 1, 4, 6, 10-15), Bk 2 (chs. 17-18, 20-21, 29, 31), Lecture 5, read, Bk 3 (chs. 32-33, 39, 42), Bk 4 (chs. 46-47), Review and Conclusion.

Lectures 6 and 7. JOHN LOCKE 1632?1704
Set Text: Two Treatises of Government [c.1682-3, publ. 1689], ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge Texts, 1989). 320.5 LOC; and Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)

Weeks 8-9:
The return to Republicanism

Lecture 8. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1784) Equality and Liberty
Set texts: The Social Contract (1762) 320.5 ROU and The Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1754) 323.41 ROU (the Everyman Edition has the two texts together).

Lecture 9 Overview and Conclusions
Congratulations you have reached the end of the course: now the real work begins! In this session we will reflect upon the diversity of strategies and ideas we have encountered by returning to our starting point to explore whether our opinions have changed or developed.

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