Political Science 180
Introduction to Political Thinking
Beloit College
Spring 2008
Course description
What does politics involve? What makes something “political,” per se? Max Weber associates politics with the legitimate use of power. Aristotle described politics as the pursuit of the highest good, involving dialogue about the advantageous and the harmful, the just and the unjust, backed by “laws with teeth.” He and others also portray politics as involving the authoritative allocation of resources. In other words, politics involves decisions about who gets what, including not just social goods but costs and penalties as well. Harold Lasswell rendered his definition of politics as an equation: p}d}r = P, which translates to politics amounting to “private emotions displaced upon public objects and rationalized in terms of public interest.”
All of these definitions (and they are by no means exhaustive) reveal important dimensions of politics: claims about justice and its pursuit; personal ideology rendered public; the exercise of power; decisions that can hold serious implications for people’s lives.
The goal of this course is not so much to march you through a history of political thought but to encourage you to think seriously about what it means to think politically – that is, to think about some ways in which people may recognize and pursue justice, rationalizing their personal values in terms of the public good. In our discussions, we will take seriously the possibilities of justice, all the while realizing that when one claims that a good should be realized politically, it means that violence may be legitimately exercised in its name.
Course Objectives
I have designed the course with the aim that you will gain the following by taking it:
- a sense that thinking about politics is important, intriguing, and intricate;
- a grasp of different ways of recognizing and pursuing justice, some more easily categorized and labeled than others;
- an understanding of the ways in which both certainty and uncertainty can pose dangers in politics;
- a stronger ability to read texts closely -- to recognize their complexity and to have patience and confidence in deciphering them;
- dexterity in engaging the texts in your own writing;
- enhanced willingness and ability to engage in dialogue about, as Aristotle would say, the advantageous and the harmful, the just and the unjust.
This includes listening well, thinking about what you can contribute to the discussion in a manner that suits your own style, responding constructively to others, marshalling good evidence, and being able to weigh your and others’ ideas so that you are able to glean the best “take-aways” from our discussions.
Requirements
- Class citizenship
What I seek most from you is that you do the assigned reading each day, that you think about it before we’re scheduled to discuss it and that you generally seem engaged and willing to take some initiative in relation to the topics that we are exploring.
Consistency in attendance is important for your own learning, as well as for maintaining continuity in class discussions and for building trust and rapport among your peers. For this reason, I expect you to attend class unless you are ill or must deal with a personal or family emergency, and I expect that if you are dealing with such a situation, you will contact me in person or by phone before class. Excessive unexcused absences (i.e., more than three) will result in a substantial grade penalty.
Because we will rely on close textual analysis in our discussions, you should ALWAYS bring the assigned book to class. Some readings will be available online, either through a Web link or on Moodle. Others will be on reserve at the library. THESE READINGS ARE NOT OPTIONAL. You should make photocopies or print them out and mark them as necessary or take extensive notes to which you can refer during class discussion and in preparation for exams and essays.
Your assigned reading for each day is outlined in the schedule that follows. If you ever encounter difficulty in accessing any of these readings, please contact me as soon as possible to alert me to that fact. Problems encountered due to a typo in the syllabus or glitches at the library or with Moodle do not amount to an automatic “bye” for that day’s assignments.
I have done my best to lay out a realistic schedule for reading and discussing a number of different kinds of texts for this course. Some are easier to cover in a concise manner than others, and some will ignite more and/or less class discussion than I anticipated. To me, the ebb and flow of student discussion is an integral part of the learning experience, but it does demand flexibility on all of our parts. We may sometimes fall behind in the syllabus due to an extended discussion of a particular aspect of the reading or unfolding news event.
Unless otherwise stated in class or via e-mail, I expect you to adhere to the schedule outlined here. My advice: DO NOT FALL BEHIND IN THE READINGS FOR THIS CLASS. Without adequate preparation, you will find that class discussion benefits you very little, and you will find it difficult to catch up.
Your contributions to class discussion can take on a variety of forms: asking and answering questions; raising new topics; responding to comments made by others.
Please listen well to your classmates and engage them. Remember that you share a common mission: to understand the texts and the themes that underlie them and to evaluate them. You will learn much from others, and others will learn much from you, but only if you speak and listen well. These are not mutually exclusive activities.
Along with being an active and close reader of the assigned texts, be on the lookout for other material that relates to the themes of the course. Newspaper and magazine articles, or an anecdote about campus life, can shed light on a difficult subject or help all of us think of it in a different way.
If you feel that the class has somehow ignored or shortchanged an issue or question that you think is important, please bring it up. Your peers and I will appreciate your input, and we will attempt to address your questions in class. If that is not possible, you are more than welcome to consult with me during my office hours.
- Weekly Writing
By Friday at 4 p.m. of each week , you will be expected to post on Moodle a minimum of 1-2 pages (double-spaced) of writing that reflects your thoughts on a particular issue or question that has arisen from class discussion and your own reflections on the assigned reading that week. The tone of this short essay can be informal, but the thought put into it should be serious. It shouldn’t appear to have been dashed off in five minutes. Instead you should attempt in this brief space to explore some puzzle about the assigned text(s) for that week that seems to deserve further reflection on your part. Each essay will be graded on a scale of very good, satisfactory and unsatisfactory (as well as zero if you fail to hand it in on time). We may use some of this writing as the basis for class exercises as well.
By January 24, I will post an example of what I seek in this kind of writing. Your first short essay is due on Friday, January 26 at 4 p.m., and each following Friday at 4, with the exception of March 2.
- Formal essays and revision
You will write three 4-5-page formal essays for this course. With each, we will devote some class time to discussing the assignment and possible strategies for approaching it. We will also discuss draft introductions and outlines.
You have the option of revising all of your essays, and you must revise at least one. At the beginning of the semester, you will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. Group 1 must revise their first essays, group two their second, group 3 their third. A tutorial will be available for each group, in which you may choose to participate or not. However, you must indicate your intentions about tutorial participation when the essay is assigned and stick with that decision.
For essays in which you are not one of those who must participate in the tutorial, you may revise your essay according to the following criteria:
- you must meet with me within three days of the graded essay being returned;
- in your discussion with me you must present a clear sense of the way in which you intend to revise your essay and how it will be improved;
- we need to agree that it is worth your while to revise the work;
- you must complete the revision within one week of the original being handed back to you. Your revised work will receive at least the average of the two grades you receive. Clear effort in both drafts and substantial improvement may result in a higher grade.
- Midterm exam
On March 1, we will have an in-class exam, consisting of short-answer and essay questions.
- Final exam
Your final for the course will be comprehensive and will involve short-answer and essay questions.
The exam will be held on Friday, May 4 from 9 to 11 a.m. Please plan your travel accordingly. I do not accept departure from campus as an adequate rationale for the rescheduling of exams.
Academic Honesty
Submitting original work is central to your life as a student and to our collaborative work as a community of learners. If you submit the work of others as your own, you have lost sight of what it means to be a student and have destroyed the relationship of trust and respect that should exist in a classroom. Rather than learning, you seem only interested in pretending to complete assignments, and that serves no one’s purposes well.
For these reasons, I take academic honesty very seriously and expect you to understand, and to follow, Beloit’s policy on academic honesty printed in the Student Handbook.
Simply put, you must give credit where credit is due. This includes not only acknowledging direct quotes with quotation marks and proper citation but also correctly citing any sources – including online ones – from which you have drawn insight or information in each instance where you have benefited from such sources. This includes when you paraphrase that material.
If you choose not to follow these guidelines, you will receive an F on the assignment in which the offense occurred, and I will notify the Dean of Students office regarding your plagiarism. If others have reported you for similar offenses, you are likely to be suspended or expelled.
Expectations regarding written work
This is a writing class, designed to hone your writing skills and grounded in the belief that writing about issues and texts will enhance your substantive grasp of the material. You should approach such assignments with these aims in mind.
Papers must be handed in during class on the day they are due. I also expect you to be prepared for class on the day that you hand in an assignment.
Late papers will be penalized one grade increment per day. If you need to seek an extension, you enhance the likelihood that I will grant one if you plan ahead and request such an extension at least three days prior to the due date of the assignment. You may have only one extension for the semester.
Without prior arrangement, papers will not be accepted later than two weeks after they are due. Papers which exceed this deadline or are not submitted will receive a zero. You must complete all assignments in this course to receive a passing grade.
Special note: Make back-ups of your work. Do not expect that you will receive automatic — or lengthy — extensions because you experience computer problems.
I expect papers to be neatly typed and double-spaced with realistic margins and fonts (e.g., 1" margins on all sides and 12-point Times Roman font). If you have questions about this, ask me. Citations should follow Chicago/Turabian style. Guidelines for this style can be found at http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocChicago.html, in Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, the Chicago Manual of Style or any other number of guides, including Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Manual of Style.
I also expect your papers to exhibit a working knowledge of grammar and spelling. You should proofread your work even if you have spelling and grammar checks on your computer.
Egregious spelling or grammatical errors will result in grade penalties.
Please remember to number the pages of your papers. Completing this simple task facilitates my reading of, and commenting upon, your work. Consequently, it improves my mood tremendously as I grade, and your interests are served accordingly.
Papers that are not stapled will be returned. As a college student, you should now own a stapler. Professors also appreciate it if you don’t randomly show up at their offices, asking to borrow their staplers.
Students with Disabilities
If you have a disability and would like to speak to someone about possible accommodations, please visit the LSSC (Learning Support Services Center) located on the first floor of 635 College St. You will need to provide appropriate documentation of your disability to Diane Arnzen, Director of the LSSC. If you wish to receive accommodations in my class please provide me the LSSC Accommodation Verification Letter dated for this semester as soon as possible so your learning needs may be appropriately met.
Grading
We are all part of a system that requires grades. Yet grades also distort the learning process, encouraging you to seek my approval more than your own satisfaction and learning. I will assign grades to your work, and how each component contributes to your final grade is listed below. Please remember, however, that your work here at Beloit should be directed toward the enhancement of your own understanding and skills, not simply chalking up a grade. I encourage you to meet with me so that we can discuss your essays, what worked well, what did not, and how you might improve your work in the future. My office hours are listed at the top of the syllabus, or you can e-mail me to make an appointment.
| Class Citizenship |
10% |
| Weekly writing |
10% |
| Midterm |
15% |
Formal essays
(3 essays @ 15% each) |
45% |
| Final Exam |
20% |
Books to Buy
Grene and Lattimore (eds). Sophocles I, Second Ed. (Chicago)
Koestler. Darkness at Noon (Vintage)
Locke. A Letter Concerning Toleration (Hackett)
Mill. On Liberty (Hackett)
Plato. Five Dialogues (Hackett)
Shakespeare. Measure for Measure (Signet)
Soyinka. Death and the King’s Horseman (Norton)
Course Schedule
| January |
|
| 16 |
Introduction and Overview |
| 18 |
Sophocles, Antigone |
| 20 |
WEISSBERG CHAIR EVENT (extra credit):
BIFF screening of Long Night's Journey into Day with talkback by Richard Goldstone. 7:30 p.m., Wilson Theater |
| 23 |
Antigone |
| 24 |
WEISSBERG CHAIR EVENT (extra credit):
Lecture by Richard Goldstone: “South Africa's Transition to Democracy” 8 p.m., Moore Study Lounge |
| 25 |
Thucydides, Melian Dialogue |
| |
Goldstone, For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator, selections (Reserve) |
| 27 |
WEISSBERG CHAIR EVENT (extra credit):
Conference: Transitional Justice: accountability after mass atrocities
9 a.m. – 4 p.m., Moore Study Lounge For more details |
| 30 |
Plato, Apology |
| |
Essay 1 assigned |
| |
|
| February |
|
| 1 |
Plato, Crito |
| |
Writing Discussion |
| 6 |
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, chs. 1-3, 7 |
| |
Essay 1 due |
| 8 |
Aristotle, Politics, Book I, chs. 1-6, 12-13 |
| |
Essay 1 tutorial |
| 13 |
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure |
| |
Group 1 Revised Essays due in class |
| 15 |
Measure for Measure |
| 20 |
Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman |
| 22 |
Death and the King’s Horseman |
| 27 |
Review |
| |
|
| March |
|
| 1 |
Midterm |
| 5-9 |
SPRING BREAK |
| 13 |
The Gospel of Matthew (Moodle) |
| 15 |
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation” (Moodle) |
| 20 |
Dostoevsky, “The Grand Inquisitor” |
| |
Essay 2 Assigned |
| 22 |
Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration |
| 27 |
A Letter Concerning Toleration |
| |
Essay 2 due |
| 29 |
Mill, On Liberty |
| |
Essay 2 tutorial |
| |
|
| April |
|
| 3 |
Mill, On Liberty |
| |
Group 2 revised essays due |
| 5 |
Du Bois, From Dusk to Dawn, selections (Reserve) |
| 10 |
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Reserve) |
| |
Essay 3 assigned |
| 12 |
SYMPOSIUM DAY – NO CLASS |
| |
ATTEND SYMPOSIA |
| 17 |
McIntosh, “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (Moodle) |
| |
Essay 3 due |
| 19 |
Koestler, Darkness at Noon |
| |
Essay 3 Tutorial |
| 24 |
Koestler, Darkness at Noon |
| |
Group 3 revised essays due |
| 26 |
Wrap-up and Review |
| |
|
| May |
|
| 1 |
Wrap-up and Review |
| 4 |
Final Exam, 9 a.m. |
|
