Philosophy 115

The course will examine some of the basic concepts of politics and specifically the concept of the political. This concern is motivated by the thought that our traditional understanding of politics (going ultimately back to Plato and Aristotle) has come or is coming apart. In the middle section of the course attention will be focused on the work of Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault and their attempts to re-conceptualize the field of politics. The final third of the course will consider how questions concerning technology, terrorism, globalization, and the environment affect the way we need to think about politics.