5AANB008

 Political  Philosophy  II:  History  of  

Political  Philosophy    
Syllabus  –  Academic  year  2015/16  
 
Basic  information  
Credits: 15
Module Tutor: Dr Sarah Fine
Office: 902
Consultation time: Tuesdays 12pm and Thursdays 12pm.
Semester: Second
Lecture time and venue: Tuesdays, 3-4pm, K4U.12
*Please note that tutorial times and venues will be organised independently with your teaching tutor
 
Module  description  (plus  aims  and  objectives)  

Students will focus on the work of five major figures in the history of modern political philosophy: Thomas
Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. In this way, students will be
introduced to a selection of the central texts, concepts, and debates in political philosophy.
Aim s:
• To engage with a selection of important texts in the history of political philosophy, and to consider
why these are key texts.
• To draw upon the texts in order to think carefully about central debates, concepts, traditions and
controversies in political philosophy.
• To reflect on enduring themes in political philosophy, such as the relationship/tension between
liberty and authority, and between liberty and equality.
Objectives:
By the end of the module, the students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and
practicable skills appropriate to a Level 5 module and in particular will be able to demonstrate:
• A good understanding of the core texts and debates that they have studied in depth.
• That they recognise the importance of these texts in the history of political philosophy.
• The ability to critically assess the arguments in question.

Assessment  methods  and  deadlines  

Outline  of  lecture  topics  (plus  suggested  readings)  
• Formative assessment: 2 x 1500 word essays.
Deadlines: first essay due at 16:00 on Friday 26 February 2016; second essay due on 16:00 on Friday
08 April 2016
• Summative assessment: 2 x 2000 word essays.
Deadline: 12:00 (NOON) on Thursday 19 May 2016
NB Please note that for semester I-only Study Abroad students, assessment requirements may vary.

Be sure to familiarise yourselves with the College’s guidelines on plagiarism and correct referencing:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/help/plagiarism/index.aspx
 Weeks One and Two <19 and 26 Jan>: Thomas Hobbes
Suggested reading:
• Thomas Hobbes ([1651] 1996) Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), parts 1 and 2.
• Richard Tuck (1989/2002) Hobbes: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University
Press).

Weeks Three and Four <2 and 9 Feb>: John Locke

Suggested reading:
• John Locke ([1690] 1988) ‘Second Treatise’ in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
• John Locke ([1689] 1985) A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. James Tully (Indianapolis:
Hackett)
• John Dunn (2003) Locke: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Weeks Five and Six <16 Feb and 1 March>: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Suggested reading:
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau ([1755] 1997), ‘Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality’
in The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1997) ‘Of the Social Contract’ in The Social Contract and Other Later
Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
• Christopher Bertram (2004) Rousseau and the Social Contract (London: Routledge).

Weeks Seven and Eight <8 and 15 March>: John Stuart Mill
Suggested reading:
• John Stuart Mill ([1859, 1869] 1989) ‘On Liberty’ and ‘The Subjection of Women’ in On Liberty
and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
• John Skorupski (1989) John Stuart Mill (London: Routledge).

Weeks Nine and Ten <22 and 29 March>: Karl Marx

Suggested reading:
• Karl Marx ([1848] 2002) The Communist Manifesto, ed. Gareth Stedman Jones (London: Penguin).
• Karl Marx ([1843, 1846] 1994) ‘On the Jewish Question’ and ‘From “The German Ideology”’, in
Marx: Early Political Writings, ed. Joseph O’Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
• Karl Marx ([1875] 1996) 'Critique of the Gotha Programme’, in Marx: Later Political Writings, ed.
Terrell Carver (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
• Jonathan Wolff (2002) Why Read Marx Today? (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

 
Essay  questions    

These are the approved essay questions. If you wish to use a different essay question, contact the module
convenor with the proposed title. The module convenor will inform you whether or not that title is
appropriate. You MUST get the module convenor’s approval before using any questions that are not on the
list below.

Hobbes
• ‘Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in
awe they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre as is of every man against
every man’ (Leviathan, chapter 13). Discuss.
• What is the relationship between obedience and protection in Hobbes’s account of sovereignty?
• Critically analyse Hobbes’s claim that ‘whether a Common-wealth be Monarchicall, or Popular, the
Freedome is still the same’.
Locke
• What is the role of consent in Locke’s political theory?
• ‘But why isn’t mixing what I own with what I don’t own a way of losing what I own rather than a way
of gaining what I don’t?’ Discuss this question in relation to Locke’s account of property rights.
• Critically examine Locke’s argument that toleration should not be extended to Catholics and
atheists.
• ‘Locke’s… argument for a right of possession, as derived from the application of labour to the fruits
of nature or to land lying waste, has often been taken to be a charter for the dispossession of native
peoples by the allegedly more “Industrious and Rational” Europeans’ (Armitage). If this is the case,
must we reject the whole of Locke’s argument for a right of possession?
Hobbes and Locke
• To what extent do the differences between Hobbes's and Locke's positions on absolute sovereigns
reflect the differences in their accounts of the state of nature?
Rousseau
• ‘The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common
force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may
still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before’ (Rousseau, The Social Contract, I: 4). Does
Rousseau succeed in providing the solution?
• Does Rousseau offer a consistent account of the general will?
• What is the role of the lawgiver in Rousseau’s The Social Contract?
M ill
• Does Mill offer a clear account of when society is justified in interfering with an individual’s liberty
of action?
• ‘Mill’s defence of liberty is not utilitarian’. Discuss.
• ‘The Subjection of Women is obviously right but of little importance’. Discuss.
OR
• Why read The Subjection of Women today?
M arx
• What is the role of alienation in Marx’s critique of capitalism?
• What is wrong with exploitation?
• Critically assess Marx’s account of ideology.

 
Suggested  additional  readings  
General
• Iain Hampsher-Monk (1992) A History of Modern Political Thought: Major Political Thinkers from Hobbes
to Marx (Oxford: Blackwell).
• Andrew Levine (2002) Engaging Political Philosophy: From Hobbes to Rawls (Oxford: Blackwell).
• Susan Moller Okin (1979) Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press)
• John Rawls (2007) Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge MA:
Harvard University Press).
Hobbes
• Annabel Brett and James Tully with Holly Hamilton-Bleakley (eds.)(2006) Rethinking the Foundations
of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), chapters by Tuck and
Hoekstra.
• Gregory Kavka (1986) Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
• Michael Oakeshott (1975) Hobbes on Civil Association (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• Quentin Skinner (2008) Hobbes and Republican Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),
chapters 5 and 6.
Locke
• John Dunn (1969) The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the 'Two
Treatises of Government' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
• John Horton and Susan Mendus (eds.) (1991) John Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration in Focus (New
York: Routledge).
• A. John Simmons (1989) ‘Locke's State of Nature’, Political Theory, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 449-470.
• James Tully (1993) An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
• Jeremy Waldron (2002) God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations of Locke's Political Thought
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Rousseau
• Joshua Cohen (2010) Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• Frederick Neuhouser (1993) ‘Freedom, Dependence and the General Will’, Philosophical Review, vol.
102, no. 3, pp. 363-395.
• Judith N. Shklar (1969) Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
• Gopal Sreenivasan (2000) ‘What is the General Will?’, Philosophical Review, vol. 109, no. 4, pp. 545–581.
• Robert Wokler (2001) Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
M ill
• Julia Annas (1977) ‘Mill and the Subjection of Women’, Philosophy, vol. 52, pp. 179-94.
• Richard Arneson (1980) ‘Mill versus Paternalism’, Ethics, vol. 90, no. 4, pp. 470-489.
• Daniel Jacobson (2000) ‘Mill on Liberty, Speech, and the Free Society’, Philosophy & Public Affairs,
vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 276-309.
• Jonathan Riley (1998) Mill On Liberty (London: Routledge).
• Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras (eds.) (2007) J. S. Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
M arx
• William James Booth (1989) ‘Gone Fishing: Making Sense of Marx’s Concept of Communism’,
Political Theory, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 205-222.
• G.A. Cohen (1979) Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• Steven Lukes (1985) Marxism and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
• Michael Rosen (1996) On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge:
Polity), chapter 6.
• Justin Schwartz (1995) 'What's Wrong with Exploitation?', Noûs, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 158-188.