−1− GVPT 241, Political Theory: Ancient and Modern (Spring, `07) Professor Alford, 1151 Tydings, 405 4169 Office hrs: Tu. 3-4:30, Thur. 3-4. Please make an appointment. Often I have meetings during office hours. The best way to make an appointment is by email: [email protected]. The second best is by voice-mail, 5/4169. While I ask you to make appointments (to avoid disappointment; you are always free to drop by my office hours and see if I am available), don’t think this means that I am unwilling to chat with you about almost anything related to the course during office hours. I’d love to chat. If you cannot meet me during my office hours, we can arrange another time. Your teaching assistants/discussion leaders will provide their office hours, phone numbers, and so forth in your discussion group. Please visit them too. We will set up a webboard for this class where lecture (and other) topics can be discussed. The great advantage of this course, at least from the professor’s perspective, is that it is impossible. Who could survey 2,500 years of Western political thought in a semester? Instead of trying to cover a little bit here and there, I’ve decided to organize the course around several themes: 1. Whether issues of personal morality, including yours, have anything to do with political theory. 2. Why people are so obedient, and individualism frequently so superficial. 3. Why good people suffer and bad people prosper? 4. The meaning of freedom. 5. Why be just, honest, and good? Whatever else one can say about these questions, they are hardly trivial. The question is whether we can do them justice. Several things to note about the course: 1. This course is designed not just to teach you about political theory, but to improve your writing. I have assigned two papers. Each may be rewritten once and resubmitted for a better grade. Grammar, punctuation and organization count. Each paper is worth 25% of your final grade for a total of 50%. More details are given at the end of syllabus. 2. Students do not learn if they do not do the reading. There is, I’ve learned over the years, a tendency for some students to skip the lectures and skim the readings. With a little bit of persuasion, these students can often be persuaded to come to class and read more carefully. So that we can all benefit (I prefer lecturing to students who have read the material and come to class regularly), I will give six pop-quizzes: surprise, unannounced quizzes over the reading material assigned for that day. They will be quite simple: what did the author say about x? The quizzes may be given either in lecture or in discussion section. I will take the best 5 quizzes, each worth 5% of your final grade for a total of 25% . Several of you will likely get a poor grade in the course because you will do everything right but the quizzes 3. I will give you the next day's reading assignment (over which you are “quizzable") on the board every class day. 4. Quizzes cannot be made up; you have one freebie. Late papers will be downgraded one grade per day that classes are in session.−2− 5. There is no midterm. The final will consist of one essay question. The final is worth 25% of your final grade. It will be given during the scheduled final exam period. 6. This course is built around the discussion sections and discussion leaders. Attendance is expected. Most, but not all, pop quizzes will be given there. Your discussion leader is your friend. Please visit him or her often. 7. Professor Alford is responsible for all the grades in the course. See him if you are unhappy with your grade on any assignment, but please see your TA first. 8. I pace my lectures according to how well students seem to understand the material. We may fall behind, but I’ll tell you every lecture where you should be in your readings. You will know what you are responsible for. Topic 1: Do issues of personal morality, including yours, have anything to do with political theory. Weeks 1-2: David Callahan, The Cheating Culture, all. Trickle-down corruption Callahan calls it. “What happens when you’re an ordinary middle-class person struggle to make ends meet . . . and you stop believing that the rules are fair? You just might make up your own moral code. . . . Middle-class Americans are both insecure and cynical these days—a dangerous combination—and many feel besieged by material expectations that are impossible to attain. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many people are leveling the playing field however they see fit.” (Callahan, 23-24) Topic 2: Individuals Respond to Authority Weeks 3-4 Milgram, Obedience to Authority, all. We consider a shocking experiment. Most people, it seems, will obey an anonymous experimenter and deliver painful electrical shocks to a sick old man. Why? A video of the experiment will be shown. My idea is that most of you are more obedient and compliant than you know, and that what we call individuality is often superficial. My other idea is that the most important question in political theory is what you would do when faced with malevolent authority. Week 5: Browning, Ordinary Men, all. Would you believe that some ordinary men, people much like you and me, would obey orders to slaughter innocent men, women and children, even though they could have refused with no serious consequences? I wonder what you would do. Week 6: Sophocles, Antigone, all. It seems like a simple story. Antigone resists the unjust authority of her uncle Creon. (You see, of course, the relevance of Antigone here.) In fact, it is much more complicated. Some think Antigone a death-drenched pest. We will see parts of a video. Paper #1 (due at the end of the 6th week; I’ll provide the exact date in plenty of time): Why are people so obedient? What’s Milgram’s explanation? Does it fit Browning’s? Of course, if people weren’t obedient, society itself would collapse. What are the proper limits of obedience? It would be interesting to draw upon Callahan, considering whether some forms of cheating are disobedience. I think disobedience has to be public to be disobedience, and not just deceit, but you might convince me−3− otherwise. (Please refer frequently to the texts in making your argument.) Week 7 (1 lecture): Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" all. You can google this classic