Modern and Contemporary Political Thought (20136)

Degree/study:     Degree in Humanities
Year: 3rd and 4th
Term:1st
Number of ECTS credits: 4 credits
Hours of studi dedication: 100 hours
Teaching language or languages: Catalan (or Spanish, by students' request)
Teaching Staff: Jordi Ibáñez Fanés 

1. Presentation of the subject

The aim of this subject is to explain, in specialized courses, the current problems and philosophical movements about politics, ethics, morality, and value theory as well as the reconstruction of their origins in modern tradition.

Class schedule: 

Mondays from 12:00 to 14:00

Wednesdays from 12:00 to 14:00  

Tutorship: Mondays from 11:00 to 12:00.

Email: [email protected]  

2. Competences to be attained

 

General competences

Specific competences

1. Analysis and critical reflection skills. 2. Ability to express our own ideas and to develop complex thinking. 4. Independent learning and researching skills. 5. Being excited and self-demanding when working. 6. Having an independent moral and a theoretical imagination.

1. Having an appropriate knowledge about current philosophical and theoretical and legal literature that deals with the idea of justice. Knowing about their connections with general issues about Humanities, contemporary culture and their impacts on politics and morality in today's world. 2. Selecting and looking up specific bibliography about philosophical and legal tradition and about social theory. 3. Understanding and analysing a philosophical or legal text.  4. Using technical and philosophical terms properly. 5. Connecting an author' thought to his background, opponents, supporters and subsequent movements.

  

3. Contents

 

The course starts with an affirmation by Agamben, who says we are no longer able to distinguish between moral ideas and processual techniques about Justice. This means we are no longer able to validate a moral truth more than a kind of truth which comes from legal processual processes. The course will discuss which justice goes beyond the institution of Justice and which are the margins and limits of justice (moral values, cultural values, politics, rules, the sense of some bordering phenomena which are able to solve a conflict or make up for a damage like forgiveness, reconciliation, transition from one law to another...). This will lead to a series of topics as the origins, representation and historicity of the idea of justice in the West. However, the subject will mainly be focused on the idea of justice expressed in contemporary literature from a philosophical viewpoint, as well as on specific problems about universality, culture's position when talking about justice and conceptual legitimacy sources which formulate values that Justice, as an institution, has assumed. There will be two seminars during the course: one about Kleist and another about Kafka. The rest will be based on lessons, and discussions will always be accepted.

The structure of the subject is the following one: lectures during the first five weeks and seminars for the two subgroups, from the seventh week onwards. Thus, each student will have 24 hours of lectures and 8 hours of seminars.

Syllabus (week-by-week, roughly):

1. Anxiety theory: justice, equity, rules, rights and social justice in contemporary theory (week 1)

2. An ancient excursus: reading Plato, Aristotle and St. Thomas (week 2)

3. Modern legacies. Debates between liberals and communitarians (week 3)

4. The strangeness of limits: death penalty, forgiveness, amnesty, transitional justice (weeks 4 and 5)

5.  Justice and history: processes, processualism, values and hopes (Martin Guerre, Eichmann, "On children") (week 6)

6. Seminar: Kleist ("Michael Kohlhaas" and narrations) (weeks 7 and 8)

7. Seminar: Kafka ("The Trial" and stories) (weeks 9 and 10) 

  

  

*The full version with the sections 4. Assessment, 5. Bibliography and teaching resources, 6. Methodology and 7. Planning of activities is available in the original version.

4. Assessment

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5. Bibliography and teaching resources

5.1. Basic bibliography

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5.2. Complementary bibliography

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5.3. Teaching resources

text

6. Metodology

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7. Planning of activities

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