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Learning outcomes |
The course focuses especially on ancient, medieval and renaissance political thought. The students should learn the fundamentals of Western political theory, so that they can identify the reverberations which these cultural foundations have shown through history.
By the end of this Curriculum Unit, the student should be able to accurately describe the fundamental characteristics of ancient, medieval and renaissance thought. The student should be able to evaluate from a personal perspective, work in groups and discuss in a clever way the different authors’ theses which will be presented during the syllabus, critically interpreting and positioning them. The student should also be able to identify and show how contemporary political theory is profoundly influenced by the political thought presented in this syllabus.
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Syllabus |
The course intends to offer a wide-ranging, but occasionally in-depth oriented, syllabus regarding relevant authors and themes which are related to a problematic area containing the following topics:
0.Politics and thought: politics and culture, politics and moral imagination – the question of politics without thought.
1.Archaic political thought: Homer, Hesiod. The presence of Politics in Tragedy: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. Sophistry and Politics: Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus and Critias.
2.Ancient political thought: the philosophers and sophistry. The Republic and the Laws of Plato; Ethics to Nicomachean and Aristotle’s Politics. Metaphysics, ethics and politics.
3.Medieval political thought: Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas; the politicization of the sacred and the sacralization of the political.
4.The renaissance political thought compared with ancient thought: Machiavelli. The Schism between Religion and Politics. Virtù and fortune.
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Main Bibliography |
• Ridley, Matt, The origins of virtue. NY: Penguin Books, 1996.
• Jablonka, Eva, and Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Massachusetts: MIT, 2006.
• Gagarin, Michael and Paul Woodruff, ed., Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists. Cambridge: Cambr. UP, 1995.
• Platão, República. Lisboa: FCG, 1996.
• Aristóteles, Política. Lisboa: Vega, 1998.
• Atkins, E. M., R. J. Dodaro, ed., Augustine, Augustine: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambr. UP, 2001.
• Agostinho, A cidade de Deus, vol. I.& II Lisboa: FCG, 2000.
• Aquinas, Thomas, Aquinas: Political Writings. Cambridge: CUP, 2002.
• Maquiavel, O Príncipe. Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, Temas e Debates, 2008.
• Rowe, Christopher, Malcolm Schofield (ed), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought. Cambridge: CUP, 2006.
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