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Home , Thomas Hobbes

790:372:01 Western Political Thought From Hobbes to Mill Spring 2013 LOR-115 DC

Professor Threadcraft 311 Hickman [email protected]

This course explores the development of modern Western political thought, proceeding chronologically from Machiavelli and Hobbes through Mill and Marx. Among the major themes we shall consider are the origins of the modern , the rise of theory, the Enlightenment and its critics, and tensions between individual and community. Where possible we also examine contemporary critical race, postcolonial and feminist treatment of the classic texts.

Assigned texts for this course have been ordered at the Barnes and Noble book store.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. Selected Political Writings, ed. David Wootton. Hackett. Hobbes, Thomas. . Oxford. Locke, John. Second Treatise of and Letter Concerning Toleration. Dover. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Basic Political Writings. Hackett. The Portable Enlightenment Reader, ed. Isaac Kramnick. Viking/Penguin. Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the in France. Dover. Mill, John Stuart. On and Other . Oxford. The Marx-Engels Reader. Norton.

Additional Readings: All additional readings are listed to help you as you read the texts, and often to present a contemporary analysis of the texts or events covered therein. The additional readings may not be covered in the course lecture.

Course grades are determined as follows: Midterm Exam: 40% Final exam/essay: 50% In- writing assignments: 10%

Course policies and information Students must submit a midterm and a final to pass the course Attendance is mandatory

Please note the University’s policy on academic integrity and plagiarism: http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/resources

Tentative schedule of readings and lectures (specific assignments TBA in lecture)

1/23 - Introduction

1/28 – Niccolo Machiavelli, (in Selected Political Writings)

1/30 - Machiavelli, The Prince

2/4 – Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, selections (in Selected Political Writings)

2/6 – no class

2/11 – Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan additional reading:

Joanne Wright, “Choice Talk, Breast Implants and Feminist Consent Theory: Hobbes Legacy in Choice Feminism,” (in Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes.)

2/13 – Hobbes, Leviathan additional reading:

Frantz Fanon, , “On Violence” (in The Wretched of the Earth)

2/18 – Hobbes, Leviathan additional reading:

Hannah Arendt, On Violence, selections

2/20 – , Second Treatise of Government additional reading:

Mary Lyndon Shanley, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth- Century English Political Thought” (in Feminist Interpretations of John Locke)

2/25 – Locke, Second Treatise additional reading:

Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness as ,” Harvard Review, Vol. 106, No. 8 (Jun., 1993), pp. 1707-1791

Saidiya Hartmann, Scenes of Subjection: Terror and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America, selections

2/27 - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (in Basic Political Writings)

3/4 - Rousseau, On the Social Contract (in Basic Political Writings) additional reading:

Carole Pateman and Charles W. Mills, Contract and Domination, selections

Charles W. Mills, Rousseau, the Master’s Tools, and Anti-Contractarian Contractarianism, The CLR James Journal: A Review of Caribbean Ideas Special Issue: Creolizing Rousseau, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009

3/6 - Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality (in Basic Political Writings) additional reading:

Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “Rousseau and Fanon on Inequality and the Human Sciences,” The CLR James Journal: A Review of Caribbean Ideas Special Issue: Creolizing Rousseau, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009

3/11 - The Enlightenment Reader, selections additional reading:

CLR James, The Black Jacobins

3/13 - The Enlightenment Reader, selections additional reading:

Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of

3/25 - midterm

3/27 – no class

4/1 – The Enlightenment Reader, selections additional reading:

David Scott, Conscripts of : The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment

4/3 - , Reflections on the Revolution in France

4/8 – Burke, Reflections

4/10 - Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the of Woman, Selections

4/15 – , , On Liberty additional reading:

Isaiah Berlin, “Two of Liberty”

4/17 – Mill, On Representative Government additional reading:

Nancy Hirschmann, “Revisioning Freedom: Relationship, Context and the of Empowerment,” Feminist Reconstructions of Traditional Concepts in Western Political Theory.”

4/22 – The Marx-Engels Reader, selections additional reading:

Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marx and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union.” Capital & Class Summer 1979 vol. 3 no. 2 1-33

4/24 – The Marx-Engels Reader, selections

Linda Nicholson, “Feminism and Marx: Integrating Kinship with the Economic,” (in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory)

4/29 - The Marx-Engels Reader, selections

5/1 – Make up/Review

5/6 – Final Exam