Instructor: Tom Atchison
Phone: 612-728-9421 (home)
3734 17th Ave. So. E-mail: tomatchison@bigfoot.com or
Mpls. MN 55407 tatchison@gw.hamline.edu
Class meetings: 1:00-4:30 Saturdays,
Jan. 4, 18; Feb. 1, 15; Mar. 1, 15, 29; in Whitby 120B
Course
Description:
This course will introduce students
to social and political philosophy: both to the history of the subject and to
the activity of thinking critically about political values and social
institutions. Despite the roughly
chronological progression of the reading assignments, I think that the second
goal is more important. I hope you will
learn something about the opinions and arguments of past thinkers, but I am
more concerned that you make progress in learning how to read critically, to
think carefully, and to speak and write cogently. Moreover, I hope you will come away from the course with a sense
that careful and critical thinking about political questions is, though not
easy, something you can do and can enjoy doing.
Some questions we will
consider: What is a just society? What
is the proper role of government? When,
if ever, are we justified in breaking the law?
What is the best way of understanding such fundamental political values
as liberty, equality, community, and democracy? Are there conflicts between some of these values and, if so, how
can they be resolved? Do the sorts of
social and political arrangements that we have in the USA today give us the
most liberty, equality, democracy, etc. that we can get? Or are there ways that we could make our
society, for example, more democratic?
What have been the consequences of the fact that Western political
theory has been almost exclusively the product of relatively privileged white
males? How, if at all, can we hope to
get reliable or acceptable answers to questions like these?
One way of thinking about the
structure of the course is this: we will spend the first half of the term
working through the history of that tradition of political theory which
culminates in an endorsement of (roughly) the sort of society we actually have
in the Western democracies today. Then
we will spend the second half of the term examining the views of those who are
very critical (in one way or another) of the status quo and of that
‘mainstream’ tradition of political and social thought.
Texts:
Mitchell
Cohen and Nicole Fermon, Princeton Readings in Political Thought
Larry
Arnhart, Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Rawls
Charles
W. Mills, The Racial Contract
Other readings will be photocopied and handed
out in class and/or made available over the Internet. Good access to the Internet will be necessary for full
participation in this class.
Please bring the
assigned readings to class each week
Class website: I maintain a simple website where I post
course handouts and information at http://www.woldww.net/classes/. If you decide to register for this class,
check this website for study questions and further explanations of topics and
assignments.
Conduct of the Course
Class time will
be devoted largely to discussion, some in small groups, some all together. I will occasionally lecture, more often I
will answer questions as they come up in discussion, and even more often I will
try to help you figure out how to answer your questions yourself.
Much of our
discussion will focus on understanding and evaluating the texts. This will work well only if you have done
the assigned reading carefully -- often twice or three times -- and given it
some thought. In philosophy we are
interested not in the information that can be extracted from a text, nor simply
in the conclusions or opinions that an author expresses; we are primarily
interested in understanding and assessing the reasoning that an author
uses to try to establish or support those conclusions. This requires a very careful sort of
reading.
The point of struggling
with these difficult texts is not only to understand what some great minds have
produced. A guided tour through the
Museum of Great Ideas is a very good thing, but not the best thing that
philosophy has to offer. Better is the
opportunity to learn to think for yourself.
The texts can serve as models of careful and/or creative thinking, as challenges
to our prejudices and assumptions, and as starting points for our own reflections. But the only way to learn to philosophize is
to enter the conversation yourself. In
this way a course in philosophy is more like a course in drawing or sculpture
-- a studio art course -- than like a course in art history or art appreciation. You can’t learn to draw by just watching
other people draw, and you can’t learn to do philosophy by just listening and
reading. You have to express your
views, learn from other people’s reactions, and work at refining and clarifying
what you think.
Coursework
Time commitment outside of class
College and University classes
usually meet for three or four hours per week and require (according to a
common rule of thumb) roughly 2 hours of course-related work outside of class
for every hour spent in class. Weekend
College classes are supposed to provide an equivalent learning experience with
only about half the class time. It
would seem to follow that Weekend College students will need to do even more
work outside of class than they would if they were taking a day school
class. In other words, you should
expect to spend at least 6-7 hours a week outside of class working on this
course (12-14 hours during each two week interval between class meetings).
Reading assignments
In order to produce adequate papers and to participate
meaningfully in class discussion it will be necessary to do the assigned
reading quite carefully and to spend some time thinking about what you have
read. It will almost certainly be
necessary to read some of the assigned texts more than once, not only because
they are difficult and dense, but also because we are going to be trying to do
more than get the gist of what a writer is saying. We are going to be trying to critically evaluate the views
presented and also the evidence and arguments for those views. This requires more than a superficial
reading. Come
to class ready to say what you found interesting, what you found confusing,
silly, or just plain wrong, what seemed to you to be the most important claims
made, and what arguments or justifications were offered for those claims. Make marks in your books or write down notes
so that you can point to the passages that interest or puzzle you.
A short paper (2-4 pages) will be
due at every class meeting. In these
papers you will be asked to describe and reflect on your own experience as well
as to summarize and respond to readings. (60% of your grade.)
Position
paper
An 8-10 page position paper will be due at the end of the trimester. A complete draft of your paper will be due at the sixth meeting (March 15). This assignment will ask you to develop and defend your own position on the direction our national politics should take. Detailed instructions will be handed out later. (20% of your grade)
Class discussion
Participation in class discussions is a
very important part of the work for this course. Philosophy is an activity that takes place very largely in
dialogue. We need to test our arguments
and opinions by exposing them to criticism from a variety of different points
of view. We need to take into account
the experiences and sensibilities of many people. A fruitful dialogue requires that everyone be willing to share
their ideas and perceptions. (Shy
people, this may be hard for you.) And
it requires that we allow others the space they need in order to feel
comfortable joining in and that we treat their contributions with some
kindness. (Brash or opinionated people, this may be hard for you.) I will very often pose questions to the class. If you have an answer to one of these
questions in your head, and you don’t let it come out of your mouth, you will
be depriving yourself and the rest of us of one of the best things a class like
this can offer: a frank and open discussion.
Most
class sessions will include small-group discussion projects. The
purpose of these projects is to open discussion and to focus it on particular
issues. They are also intended to be "mini-labs" in which to practice
the skills of careful reading and evaluation of reasoning. The projects will be done in groups of 3-5
and take roughly 20-45 minutes to complete.
Each group should keep notes on its discussion, sign the notes and hand
them in at the end of each class session.
Often groups will also report orally on their discussions.
If you miss a
discussion project, you should get hold of the instructions, write out
responses to the questions on your own, and hand them in as soon as you can.
20% of your grade will be determined
by my evaluation of the quality of your participation in class
discussions. Just showing up and paying
attention earns a C for this component; occasionally making helpful
contributions earns a B; regularly making helpful contributions earns an
A. Helpful contributions include: asking
pertinent questions, answering questions asked by the instructor or by other
students, expressing your views about the texts or topics we are discussing,
responding (relevantly and respectfully) to the views expressed by others.
I try hard
to base my evaluation of your work on your understanding of the reading, the
quality of your reasoning and questioning, and the clarity and effectiveness of
your expression of your thoughts, not on whether I agree with your
political ideas and positions.
Attendance
I
don’t usually require attendance per se when I teach day or evening
classes. But we have so little class
time in the Weekend College that it seems necessary to be stricter. Missing one class is like missing two weeks
of a semester. Consequently, if you
miss two classes, I will lower your grade by one letter grade. If you miss class more than twice you will
not pass the course. If you must miss a
class, let me know as soon as possible (preferably by email).
All
work submitted for this course must be your own. Plagiarism is the academic ‘sin’ of presenting someone else’s
work as your own. It is plagiarism if
you copy something verbatim (word for word) from a published source, from the
Internet, or from another student. It
is still plagiarism if you rearrange, paraphrase, condense, or summarize
someone else’s work without making clear to your reader what is your
contribution and what is taken from your source. If the exact wording comes
from your source, then use quotation marks.
If the idea comes from someone else, give him or her credit for it. The
way to do this is to cite your sources.
There is a clear and detailed explanation of various forms of plagiarism
and of proper citation practices at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/02-1/plagiarism.html. The College’s policy on academic integrity
is detailed in LeGuide See http://minerva.stkate.edu/studentaffairs.nsf/pages/academicintegrity
and http://minerva.stkate.edu/studentaffairs.nsf/pages/codeofconduct. I will give a grade of ‘F’ to any
student who submits plagiarized work for this course.