Module Directory

This module will introduce students to key debates in modern social and political thought, through a close examination of seminal texts by Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The module will give students a deeper understanding of our intellectual and socio-political history, as well as a more profound perspective on the still active debates stemming from the positions taken by these philosophers – principally, concerning the nature of freedom, power, and democracy, and the role of the state.

The aims of this module are:

• To appreciate the key contributions that Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza and Jean-Jacques Rousseau have made to our modern understanding of society and politics.


• Develop an understanding of key political concepts like democracy, authority, sovereignty, freedom, power, equality and tolerance and the ability to critically scrutinise different conceptualisations of these ideas.


• To develop and understanding of the extent and the ways in which these modern conceptual innovations still shape contemporary political life.


• To be able to assess whether and how these conceptual innovations can still underpin social and political critiques of contemporary society.

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

1. Summarise in their own words and critically assess the philosophical ideas and concepts at work in the main texts examined the course


2. Explicate the central social and political theories presented in these texts, and relate them to important political events in historical period in which they were written


3. Compare and evaluate these social and political theories, making use of selected secondary literature


4. Demonstrate an understanding of the influence these theories have on our contemporary understanding of politics, making reference to contemporary political phenomena and/or theory

Skills for your Professional Life (Transferable Skills)

By the end of this module, students should also have acquired a set of transferable skills, and in particular be able to:

1. Define the task in which they are engaged and exclude what is irrelevant.


2. Seek and organize the most relevant discussions and sources of information.


3. Process a large volume of diverse and sometimes conflicting arguments.


4. Compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure.


5. Write and present verbally a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications.


6. Be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them.


7. Think 'laterally' and creatively - see interesting connections and possibilities and present these clearly rather than as vague hunches.


8. Maintain intellectual flexibility and revise their own position if shown wrong.


9. Think critically and constructively.

Incoming Study Abroad students must have already taken an introductory module in Philosophy at their home institution.

Questions we will be considering include: from where does the state get its authority? Is democracy a natural form of political organisation for humans? Does the state encroach upon our freedom, or make us free? Is inequality an inevitable consequence of society?

We will analyse critically the different answers given to these questions by Hobbes, Spinoza and Rousseau, and consider whether their philosophical accounts of the state and society provide us with a useful means of engaging with contemporary social and political issues.

This module will be delivered via:

• One 2-hour lecture and discussion session per week.
• One 1-hour discussion seminar at which issues covered in the lecture will be discussed.

Week 21 is a Reading Week.