Middle East Technical University

Department of Political Scence and Public Administration

 

ADM.414 Contemporary Political Theory

2003-2004 Spring Semester

Cem Deveci

Office: A316

Tel: 2103021

 

 

 

This course is aimed to introduce students to the works of major political thinkers of the 20th century with the central focus on the problems of domination and inequality.  It begins with the four major thinkers of the previous century who have influenced heavily the 20th century political philosophy: Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Marx.  Then, we will read essays or short passages by Arendt, Foucault, Habermas, Rawls and Mouffe with the aim of reaching certain generalizations and comparisons.  Our major questions would be: what kind of different attitudes towards the problems of domination and inequality can be delineated?  What is the relationship between domination and inequality?  Do they inevitably suppose each other?

 

 

Requirements:

 

1.                  Attendance is STRICTLY compulsory

2.                  Two mid-term Exams (one in class-25 percent)

        (one take-home-30 percent)

            Final Exam (40 percent)

            Participation (5 percent)

3.                  Students should read the weekly assigned material before coming to lectures, and be ready for raising questions, presenting and discussing.

 

READING MATERIAL

 

            19th Century Background

 

I.KANT:          “Idea for a  Universal History  with a Cosmopolitan Intent”,  in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, p:29-40.

 

 

G.W.F. HEGEL: “Master and Servant”, “Stoicism, Scepticism, the Unhappy Consciousness”, from the Phenomenology of Mind.

 

F. NIETZSCHE: “First Essay: Good and Evil, Good and Bad” in Genealogy of Morals, p: 15-56

.

 

            K. MARX:       “On Jewish Question” in Marx-Engels Reader.

 

           

20th Century

 

H. ARENDT:   “The Human Condition”, p:7-21, “What is Authority” in Between Past and Present, p: 91-141.

 

 

M. FOUCAULT: “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in Language, Counter-memory, practice, p:139-164.

 

                                    “The Subject and Power”,  in H. L. Dyefus and p. Rabinav (eds.) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, p:208-226..

 

                                    “Governmentality” in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, P. Miller- The Foucault Effect, pp.87-104.

 

J. RAWLS:      “Fundamental Ideas” in Political Liberalism, p:4-46,

 

M. SANDEL:   “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self”.

 

J. HABERMAS: “Technology and Science as Ideology” in Towards a        Rational Society.

 

“Postscript” and “Popular Sovereignty as Procedure” in Between Facts and Norms. p. 447-490.

 

C. MOUFFE:   “Radical Democracy: Modern and Postmodern” in Return of the Political, p:9-22,

 

“Democracy,  Power and the Political” in Democracy and Difference, p:245-256.

 

 

Secondary Sources (Optional)

 

Following books are suggested for both understanding the primary texts and gaining a deeper knowledge about thinkers and certain schools of thought in 20th century.

 

R. Kearney (ed.) Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy, Routledge, 1994.

 

Q. Skinner (ed.) The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987.  (Turkish translation available).

 

V. Descombes: Modern French Philosophy, trans. By L. Scott-Fox and J. M. Harding, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988. (Turkish translation available)

 

R. J. Bernstein, The New Constellation – The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity, MIT Press, 1992.

 

L. FERRY and A. RENAUT:   French Philosophy of the sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism, MIT Press, Amherst, 1990.

 

B. B. PIPPIN:  Modernism as a Philosophical Problem – On the Dissatisfactions of European     High Culture.

 

R. B. PIPPIN: Idealism as Modernism – Hegelian Variations, Cambridge                       Univ. Press, 1997.