This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module introduces students to the study of political concepts that are central to thinking about political life. Through the study of these concepts students will be introduced to the principal ideas of many of the major figures in the history of Western political thought (for example, Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau and Marx) and to the work of many contemporary political theorists as well (John Rawls, Michael Sandel, Richard Rorty, Susan Okin and others). In addition, lectures and tutorials will familiarise students with a variety of different debates about how best to understand any given concept (such as, debates about what constitutes 'human nature') as well as how to understand the relationship between different concepts (such as, whether a just society must be an equal one or not). Moreover, the module is designed to allow students to develop a set of 'conceptual tools' with which to interrogate and shape the political world in which they find themselves; a world which is saturated everyday with competing articulations of the political concepts that we will study in this module. As such, students should come to develop a subtle appreciation of how the concepts examined on this module are, to greater or lesser degrees, intrinsic to all of their studies in politics and international relations (and related subjects).
Total contact hours: 22
Private study hours: 128
Total study hours: 150
Available as an elective module
Essay, 1500 words (50%)
Exam, 2hrs (50%)
Reassessment Instrument: 100% coursework
Catriona McKinnon (ed.), Issues in Political Theory, Third Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1. demonstrate familiarity with the practice of normative political enquiry;
2. demonstrate familiarity with the philosophical foundations of political issues;
3. demonstrate familiarity with the historical evolution of Western political thought;
4. demonstrate introductory knowledge of the works of key political thinkers;
5. demonstrate introductory knowledge of the great political ideologies of the modern epoch
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