| PHIL 201a
-- Individual, Community, and the Common Good pt I Winter 2019 |
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| Instructor:
David Brink office: H&SS 801X hours: tbd email: dbrink [at] ucsd.edu |
Instructor:
Donald Rutherford office: H&SS 801X hours: tbd email: drutherford [at] ucsd.edu |
Instructor:
Clinton Tolley office: H&SS 8018 hours: tbd email: ctolley [at] ucsd.edu |
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| Time:
Weds 1:00pm--3:50pm Location: Philosophy Seminar Room (7th fl, HSS 7077) [map] |
| {texts will be made
available electronically / tentative schedule of readings
below} |
| Terence Irwin, The
Development of Ethics, vol. I; George Sabine, A History of Political Theory; Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle; Keyt and Miller, ed. Freedom, Reason, and the Polis: Essays in Ancient Greek Political Philosophy; Melissa Lane, Greek and Roman Political Ideas ---. “Ancient Political Philosophy” (SEP); Dean Hammer, Roman Political Thought: From Cicero to Augustine |
| This is the first quarter
of a two-quarter (possibly three-quarter) graduate
sequence in the history of social and political philosophy
dealing with themes about individual, community, and the
common good. The winter quarter will mostly focus on
ancient and medieval figures and traditions, with some
attention to philosophical developments bridging the later
Middle Ages and the Renaissance (e.g. Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Cicero and the Stoics, Augustine, Aquinas,
Christine de Pizan, Francisco de Vitoria, Bartolomé de las
Casas, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, and possibly Jean Bodin),
whereas the spring quarter will focus on modern figures
and traditions (e.g. Machiavelli, Hobbes, Cavendish,
Locke, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Hegel, the
Mills, and possibly Green and Bradley). We are interested in a variety of moral and political questions about the status of individuals within communities: What do individuals owe other members of the community, and what does the community owe them? What kind of good is a community — a purely instrumental good, securing a modus vivendi, or a non-instrumental good? What are the bonds of community? Do they take various forms (natural, ethical, political, cultural, spiritual), and, if so, are any of these more fundamental or of higher value than others? How should communities be organized politically? What is the relationship between ethical and political and other social-cultural demands? Do any of these differ in ideal and non-ideal theory? How, if at all, are our conceptions of moral and political demands connected with our assumptions about human nature, about the ends of nature more broadly, and about the supernatural? Many historical figures claim that ethical and political demands should be regulated by a common good. How is the common good to be understood, and what is the relationship between the personal or individual good and the common good? Are they essentially conflicting, complementary, mutually enabling, or even reciprocally entailing? Is the relationship between individual and community inherently antagonistic, or do political communities offer distinctive benefits or forms of self-realization to their members? In what way is the common good common, and what is the scope of the common good. Some conceptions of the common good are genuinely cosmopolitan, including every human (or rational) being and recognizing their equal moral standing. By contrast, other conceptions of the common good are parochial to various degrees and along various dimensions, recognizing an irreducible plurality of moral and political communities with diverse membership conditions and differential obligations toward insiders and outsiders, often based on differences in nature, culture, or relations to the divine. One goal will be the exploration and assessment of different conceptions of community and the common good. In particular, we will be interested in assessing conceptions of partiality and the differing demands of virtue and justice in relation to men vs women, children vs adults, imperial (colonizing) vs indigenous (colonized) peoples, the ruling vs working (enslaved) classes, "civilized" vs “barbarians,” "faithful" vs “heathens,” etc. How should different genders, ages, races, ethnicities, and faiths relate to each other ethically and politically? How, if at all, are our conceptions of individual, community, and the common good — and especially the relations among them — affected by whether we see human nature and history as part of a providential (or otherwise human-transcending) design? |
| {writing
assignments tentative} * attendance * weekly brief (~3min) in-class reports of your responses to the reading for Weds * weekly brief (~350word) written responses to readings by Tues midnight * medium-length (~3000 word) final essay due during finals week: critical engagement with one of our authors, related secondary literature (preceded by a ~500 word paper proposal due by end of week 9) |
| {tentative} wk1: intro, Socrates ('Crito', 'Apology') wk2: Plato, Republic wk3: Plato, Republic, Laws wk4: Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics wk5: Aristotle, Politics wk6: Cicero, De Finibus, De Officiis (& Stoicism Long/Sedley) wk7: Augustine, City of God (&) wk8: Aquinas, Summa Theologica (&) wk9: Christine de Pizan, The Body Politic (&) wk10: Francisco de Vitoria, Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Bartolome de las Casas |
| history of philosophy ethics/social/political philosophy |
| {online
encyclopedia entries} ancient political philosophy [sep] (incl cicero) plato's ethics and politics in the republic [sep] aristotle's political theory [sep] augustine [sep] medieval political philosophy [sep] (augustine, aquinas) aquinas' moral, political, legal philosophy [sep] christine de pizan [wikipedia] vitoria and las casas [sep] sepulveda and las casas [sep] |