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Semester 2

Freedom and Slavery in Political Thought (PLIT10162)

Subject

Politics

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 4 courses in Politics and/or Philosophy at grade B or above, which must include at least one course in political philosophy, political theory or history of political thought. We will only consider University/College level courses, and we cannot consider interdisciplinary courses or courses without sufficient Politics/Government/International Relations focus. **Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

Freedom is among the most powerful political ideas. This course investigates the notion of freedom in political thought from a historical and philosophical perspective. We will ask how freedom should be understood, what its implications are for social, political, and economic life, and whether the historical experience of slavery can help us think about emancipation today.

Course Description

What does it mean to be free? This course examines freedom through the lens of political theory and the history of political thought, with a particular focus on the contrasting condition of slavery. We consider the ideal of liberty in relation to a variety of ideological perspectives each year - which may include civic republican accounts of domination, socialist conceptions of wage-slavery, feminist thinking about women's subordination, or the classical liberal defence of economic liberty. So too, we shall investigate the intellectual history of slavery, and ask how contemporary societies ought to confront the enduring impact of enslavement today. Students will not only acquire knowledge of the history of freedom and slavery in political thought, but will develop skills in philosophical argumentation and conceptual analysis that will enable them to defend a specific understanding of the nature of political, economic, or social freedom. To this end, the course will be taught through a weekly seminar in which students will use the tools of political theory to discuss a range of historical and contemporary readings on freedom and slavery. Building on these discussions and feedback from a shorter initial assessment, students will undertake a longer coursework essay defending an ambitious historical and/or philosophical thesis about freedom or slavery.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a Politics exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one Politics course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second Politics course will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

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