Political Philosophy
Code
711031053
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Filosofia
Credits
6
Teacher in charge
Diogo Pires Aurélio
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
1 – To understand the problems posed by the question of politics, in its connection with the other aspects of the human experience, mainly ethics and historicity.
2 – To understand the specificity of Political Philosophy, its own methodological questions and its connection with the other scientific fields which are also concerned with politics.
3 – To understand the main schools and currents in Political Philosophy, as well as its main works, problems and concepts.
4 – Ability to set out and to weigh, from a philosophical perspective, contemporary political situations and decisions
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
Starting from the presentation of Hobbesian contractarianism and the David Humes criticism of social contact idea, the relevance of that idea in our days will be discussed, on the grounds of the analysis of John Rawls and James Buchanans works. The following main points will be stressed:
1 Politics as an artificial skill, made from individual wills
2- Contract as a rational legitimacy of power and state
3 The ontractarian principles and procedures; Ethics and Politics
4 Limits to the contractarian legitimacy
Bibliography
Hobbes, Leviathan
Hume, «Of the original contract», in Essays, Part II, chap.XII
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
Rousseau, Du Contrat Social
Buchanan,James M.; Tullock, Gordon, The calculus of Consent
Teaching method
Presentation of subjects, analysis and comment of texts, debate of themes, individual work supervised by the teacher.
Evaluation method
Regular attendance and participation in classes. To pass a compulsory written test. Individual papers will be accepted for improving the marks, if supervised by the teacher.