Course Details

PHIL 261: The Individual and the Political Community

Are human beings by nature atomic units or oriented towards community? What does the difference amount to, and why does it matter for our understanding of the ways in which political communities come into existence and are maintained? In this course we will explore these and related questions while reading two foundational works in political theory, Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’s Leviathan, as well as several related contemporary pieces.
6 credits; HI, WR2, IS; Offered Spring 2024; A. Murphy