Classic Texts

• Credit value: 15 credits at Level 6
• Convenor and tutor: Jason Edwards
• Assessment: a 500-word seminar log (10%) and 3000-word essay (90%)

This module provides an opportunity to read some of the key texts in the history of political thought with a critical eye. Works examined include Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Rousseau’s The Social Contract. You will learn how to read these texts by placing them in the context in which they written, understanding the specific questions the authors raise in light of the political problems they were addressing. But you will also see how these texts can continue to be used in analysing and understanding the political problems of the present.

Indicative module syllabus

• Reading Political Theory
• Machiavelli - The Prince, The Discourses
• Hobbes - Leviathan
• Rousseau - The Second Discourse, The Social Contract
• Tocqueville - Democracy in America
• Arendt - The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• demonstrate in-depth knowledge and an understanding of key texts in the history of political theory
• employ skills of critical interpretive analysis in reading of texts in political theory
• critically assess how the concepts and theories developed in the classic texts can be used in an understanding of political problems of the present.