Teaching

Spring 2025

Classics of Social and Political Thought III

The final quarter of Classics of Social and Political Thought turns to texts by nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers who developed critiques of existing social and political conditions: John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Simone de Beauvoir. These thinkers will invite us to explore a variety of ideas about the ways in which domination appears and operates within liberal democracies and capitalist societies, as well as the requirements for overcoming it. We will also examine the meaning of values such as equality, freedom, self-reliance, thrift, morality, and truth, and we will consider how these values shape human lives. Finally, throughout the quarter we will use the assigned texts as resources for learning about the practice of social criticism. We will consider how it can serve society, as well as how we might use the concepts and models of inquiry that we find in our texts to analyze present social and political conditions. What kinds of lives do these conditions allow us to lead?