This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught Autumn Semester 2010/2011.

This module introduces students to the ideas of key thinkers in the history of western political thought. We look carefully at the canonical works of five thinkers in the history of political thought: Plato, Aristotle, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The module considers the impact of these thinkers on ancient and modern political thought and practices, with reference to the different contexts in which they wrote. We consider the way in which these thinkers have approached the ‘big’ questions and ideas that lie behind everyday political life.

The module examines questions such as: What is justice? What is the purpose of government? What is the best form of government? Is the state ever entitled to restrict our freedom to do what we want? Why should we obey the state? When is it right to have a revolution?

Module Code and Credits: M11001 (10 credits) M11151 (15 credits)

Suitable for study at: Undergraduate level 1

Dr David Stevens, School of Politics and International Relations

Dr Stevens' research is focussed primarily within the area of contemporary normative political philosophy. Specifically, he is concerned with issues of socio-economic justice within liberal democratic societies.

Modules taught: Social Justice (level 3); War and Massacre (level 2); Justice Beyond Borders: Theories of International and Intergenerational Justice (level D).

Areas of Research Supervision: Social justice; educational; justice; Rawlsian political philosophy. In particular, David Stevens encourages applications for PhD topics in the following areas: Social justice and schooling; State education and the rights of minority cultures. Political liberalism and the creation of civic virtue; Reflective equilibrium/moral constructivism.

The Politics of Aristotle is the second part of a treatise of which the Ethics is the first part. It looks back to the Ethics as the Ethics looks forward to the Politics. For Aristotle did not separate, as we are inclined to do, the spheres of the statesman and the moralist. In the Ethics he has described the character necessary for the good life, but that life is for him essentially to be lived in society, and when in the last chapters of the Ethics he comes to the practical application of his inquiries, that finds expression not in moral exhortations addressed to the individual but in a description of the legislative opportunities of the statesman. It is the legislator's task to frame a society which shall make the good life possible. Politics for Aristotle is not a struggle between individuals or classes for power, nor a device for getting done such elementary tasks as the maintenance of order and security without too great encroachments on individual liberty. The state is "a community of well-being in families and aggregations of families for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life." The legislator is a craftsman whose material is society and whose aim is the good life.

This multidisciplinary lecture / workshop engages students in a variety of approaches to the study and practice of performance as an area of aesthetic and social interaction. Special attention is paid to the use of diverse media in performance. Interdisciplinary approaches to study encourage students to seek out material histories of performance and practice.

This subject traces the evolution of ideas about nature, and how best to study and explain natural phenomena, beginning in ancient times and continuing through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A central theme of the subject is the intertwining of conceptual and institutional relations within diverse areas of inquiry: cosmology, natural history, physics, mathematics, and medicine.