Introduction to political theory

1.

INTRODUCTION TO
POLITICAL THEORY
Brian Smith

2.

Attendance Policy
Attendance to this class is mandatory and counts 5% to your final grade. This year
attendance will be taken digitally.
1. Download our app at youhere.org/app.
2. Then use the app to enroll using the "event code" pls 120 intro to political theory
There is spatial and time limited feature to this app. You must be within the red zone
between the times of 11:55 and 12:15 on Tuesdays and Thursdays to sign in as
present. If you enter class more than 15 minutes late, or if you try to log in from your
dorm room/apartment, you will not be able to. You will be marked absent. Please
come to class on time.
Potential issues:
If you do not have a smartphone, please let me know ASAP so we can make some
arrangement to ensure you are attending classes.
This app only allows you to use one devise, so if you lose/break/forget your phone,
or your battery has died, you must be proactive in communicating with me. You must
reach out to me in advance or in the moment (by email). Requests made after class
is already over will not be accepted. It is your responsibility to communicate with me
about any issues you face.

3.

4.

Introductions
■ Prof. Brian Smith: PhD in Political Theory from Boston
University
– Research Interests:
■
Early Liberal theories of migration
■
Radical politics: anarchism
■
Early theories of race, labor, and bondage
■
Alternative forms of citizenship
■
Political Violence
– Meeting with me:
■
Office hours: by appointment,

5.

Breakdown of Assignments
Assignment
Date
Percentage
Midterm 1
August 27
15%
Midterm 2
September 16
15%
Midterm 3
October 14
15%
Midterm 4
October 28
15%
Final Exam
TBD
20%
Weekly Discussion Posts
Every Monday: Aug. 22Nov. 21
15%
Attendance
Throughout semester
5%
60%

6.

Weekly Discussion Posts
■ Each Monday, starting on August 22nd, you will be responsible for entering a 200-word post on a discussion
forum in Moodle (by 23:59). In these posts you must take a short quote from the assigned reading for that week and
reflect on it (the quote does not count as part of your word count). Write your thoughts about the passage you have
chosen. Don’t just summarize; critically engage with the passage. The quote you choose should be about 50 words in
length. Make sure you cite the passage under discussion. The purpose of this assignment is to ensure that you are
keeping up with the reading and reflecting on it.
■
Basic Criteria for full credit:
1) Must be on the reading assigned for that week.
2) Must be made on time – posted each Monday by 23:59.
3) Must contain a ~50-word length quote with citation [Chicago]
4) Must be at least 200 words in length (not including the quote).
5) Must engage meaningfully with passage chosen
■ Grading:
You will be graded out of 13 posts. The breakdown is as follows: 13/13=100, 12/13=92, 11/13= 85, 10/13=77,
9/13=69, 8/13=61, 7/13=54, 6/13=46 … and so on.

7.

Midterms and Final Exams
■ There will be four exams (15% each for a total of 60%) that take place during the semester
(August 26, September 16, October 14, and October 28). This will represent the bulk of your
grade for the semester, so it is absolutely crucial that you stay on top of the material leading up
to each exam.
■ The format of the exam will be short essay. You will be provided with two or three questions to
choose from and will be asked to write between 500 – 700 words. Exams will be take-home,
but time restricted. You will be given a certain amount of time to work on the exam. I will post
questions on Friday morning, and you will turn the final exam in on Saturday night.
– Take a look at the ‘grading rubric’ and the ‘improving exam outcomes’ which are posted
in Moodle
– These will help you prepare for the exam – basically treat these essays as mini papers
(thesis, arguments, evidence, conclusion)
■ The final exam is worth 25% and will be cumulative. You will be responsible for all the material
we have covered throughout the semester. The format will be roughly the same, though the
word-length should be around 700-900 words. You will be given several days during exam
week to complete this assignment.

8.

Managing Expectations on Exams
■ These essay exams are designed with a few things in mind:
– If you think that you can just look at the slides at the last minute to answer the
questions you will not do well. Form and structure matter. Your essays need to
include all the elements of an essay: introduction (thesis); main body (topic
sentences, arguments, evidence); conclusion (recap the main point)
– These exams are not designed to find a “right answer” or to determine how well
you can regurgitate the lecture slides. These short essays require critical
analysis and clear argumentation. You are asked to think creatively and
critically, using supporting evidence.
■ To best prepare for exams, I encourage you think about the connections between
the ideas we cover. How do ideas connect and conflict? You will often be asked to
think creatively about implications, conflicts, and unexpected linkages between
theorists.

9.

Academic Misconduct
■ Cheating of any kind will not be tolerated. If a student is caught cheating on any of the
assignments in this class, that student will receive an automatic 0 on the assignment.
■ Please note that Plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated. Discussion posts and
exams will all be checked for plagiarism. Common types of plagiarism:
– Direct copying and pasting of original source material into your assignment,
using it as your own
– Paraphrasing original source material without citation
– Poor or improper citation of source material
– Putting original language source material through translation software and using
translation as your own work
■ If you plagiarize, not only will you get a 0 for the assignment, but a plagiarism report
will be filed.

10.

A Note on Grades and your Standing in the
class:
■
D is the lowest passing grade if you do not plan to major in PSIR.
■
C- is the lowest passing grade if you plan to major in PSIR.
■
C is the lowest passing grade if you plan to use this course grade to declare a PSIR major. Remember
that to declare a PSIR major, you must pass two of these following courses with a grade of “C
“or above by the end of Spring 2022 semester: PLS120 Introduction to Political Theory;
PLS140 Introduction to Comparative Politics; PLS150 Introduction to International Relations
■
In addition, you MUST satisfy the GPA requirement of a minimum of 2.75 after two academic
semesters. Having met these requirements, students are ranked according to the sum of their differential
between their grades in the two above-mentioned courses with the average grade in each course,
and top 80 of them are allowed to declare their major in Political Science and International Relations.
■
If a student has taken the three above-mentioned courses, only the two highest grades will be used for
the ranking. Students who are tied at the 80th position will be separated by their overall GPA. If a tie still
persists after this stage, all students concerned will be allowed to declare their major in Political Science
and International Relations. For example: if a student received 90% in PLS120, which had an average
grade of 70, and 90% in PLS140, which had an average grade of 60, the sum of their differential would
be 90/70 + 90/60 = 2.786, and this score would be entered in the ranking.
■
To keep you informed during the year, I will post exam averages and the grade distributions. Hopefully, this will
let you know how you are doing relative to you classmates.
■
The average grade for this class is between a C and C-. 10% of you will earn an A- or higher, roughly 10-15% of
you will fail.

11.

The design of this class
■ 5 Themes:
– What is Politics?
– Freedom and Liberty (Authority and Coercion)
– Justice
– Civil Disobedience
– Revolution
■ What does this mean?
– Very general introduction to Classical, Modernist, and Contemporary
approaches to these issues. Not a deep dive. We’ll just scratch the surface.
– You will only be assigned to read snippets of texts (several small readings per
week), roughly 50 pages a week.
– This is a sampling designed to prepare you for upper level PT classes where
you will read complete texts and dig much deeper into these issues.

12.

Thinking about reading texts: two
methodologies
■ Straussians (Leo Strauss)
– Political theory is an ongoing conversation among great intellects (the canon).
– Great minds of the past seek to discover the truth about politics, which
transcends the particularities of time and place.
– There are perennial problems that you are invited to explore with the greatest
minds.
■ Cambridge School (Quentin Skinner, John Dunn, J.G.A. Pocock):
– Historicist or contextualist – to understand a text you need to dig into the
historical conditions and the intellection context that produced it.
– The more ‘correct’ your reading of a text is, the more alien it will become as it
will reflect a historically contingent vocabular and semantic university; it will
address problems and conditions that that are particular to that linguistic
context.
– There are no perennial problems, only contingent ones.

13.

Why study Political Theory?
■ Isaiah Berlin, “Does Political Theory Still Exist?” (1961) provides a preliminary
answer:
■ “‘In what kind of world is political philosophy in principle possible?' the answer must
be 'Only in a world where ends collide.‘”
■ What does this mean?
– If everyone agreed on a single goal about how things should be, all the
arguments would be technical, mere problem solving – what is the best way to
achieve those ends? In that kind of world, political theory would be impossible.
– Of course, that is NOT the kind of world we live in… Disagreements abound.
■ Therefore, according to Berlin, Political Theory is concerned with the:
– Elucidation of concepts (What do we mean by, say, Liberty or justice?); how
historical communities have answered these questions.
– Critical examination of presuppositions and assumptions (Why do you believe
that?);
– Questioning the order of priorities and ultimate ends (What is our goal? What
should we do?)

14.

Dismantling the Tradition
■ The philosopher Hannah Arendt says that we must confront the fact that the tradition is
already dead. She quotes Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
■ What does this metaphor mean?
It is possible to recreate and inhabit the world that generated the texts we
are reading.
When we read these texts, we need to think of ourselves as “pearl divers” trying to
salvage thought gems.

15.

Things to consider going forward:
■ Posture to the texts:
– You are not asked to believe anything in this class. But you should strive to read
each author charitably and try to understand what they are saying.
– There is a misperception that ‘critical thinking’ means ‘to criticize’ or to tear down.
– No! Critical thinking means to weigh and assess. Literally, (cri-) to pull apart or judge
+ (techne) the technical art of = .The technical art of taking things apart to see how
they work (to be able to reconstruct it).
■
What are these thinkers trying to say?
■
What problems are they trying to solve?
■
Given their parameters or assumptions, what do they get right?
■ How do these themes relate to your life as a citizen and political agent?
■ Rather than thinking of this class as a museum of long dead ideas, think about it more
like a toolkit. In this toolkit you will find many different ways of characterizing political
problems and posing their solutions.

16.

Unit 1: What is Politics?
■ Identifying political guardians – those who have the expertise to lead. (Plato, Aristotle)
■ Politics is for making people better – good leaders pass good laws which will make the
people more virtuous, better (Aristotle, Machiavelli)
■ Politics is about rights. There are fundamental (natural) rights that governments should
strive to preserve and protect (Hobbes, Locke)
■ States can be more or less rational. Politics is about aligning the state to the laws of
reason (Kant)
■ Politics is about minimizing suffering and maximizing pleasure (Mill)
■ Politics is contingent; it will always reflect the material conditions in which it is practiced.
To overcome that contingency you must understand the trajectory of history (Marx)
■ Politics is about power conceived of as domination, i.e. the subtle systems of control that
pervade our lives in ever new ways (Foucault)

17.

Guardianship – Deciding who should rule?
■ In ancient Greece, much of the discourse about politics focuses on who should rule,
■ They were specifically concerned about the competency of those who rule; Bad rulers
would seek their own private benefit; good leaders would pursue the common good;
– One (good) ruler – monarchy
– Small number of (good) rulers – aristocracy (aristos means excellence)
– Many (good) rulers – polity
-----------------------------------------------– One (bad) ruler – tyranny
– Small number of (bad) rulers – oligarchy
– Many (bad) rulers – democracy
■ But what is the common good? How do we go about knowing what the common good
is?
– Plato’s answer (through the mouthpiece of Socrates): trust the experts

18.

Plato’s Republic
■ Written around 375 BC by Plato
■ In terms of composition, it is primarily a discourse
between Socrates and two young aristocrats, Glaucon
and Adeimantus (both brothers of Plato)
■ It is a Socratic discourse on the themes of justice,
specifically the character of a just city and a just man.
■ Typically referred to as ‘city in speech’ (imagining an
ideal city in words) and it is one of the origins of the
genre of utopia.
■ Today we will look at two of Plato’s metaphors that try
to provide an answer to the question ‘who should
rule?’

19.

Metaphor 1: The Ship of State
■ Imagine you are on a ship, lost at sea, and the captain has done nothing to inspire
confidence that he can get home:
– “The ship-owner, larger and stronger than everyone on the ship, but somewhat deaf
and rather short-sighted, with a knowledge of sailing to match his eyesight.”
■ An argument breaks out among the crew: who should pilot the ship?
– “each one thinking that he ought to be captain, though he has never learned that
skill”
– In fact, they argue that “sailing a ship cannot be taught”
■ The crew members take to different strategies to gain control of the ship:
– Some flatter or bribe the ship owner
– Others seek to persuade everyone else with their rhetorical ability, charisma and
charm
– Some threaten violence
■ How do you decide who should pilot the ship?

20.

The Ship of State (Ship of Fools) metaphor
■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALXsaT6bqL0

21.

Noteworthy critique of democracy
■ The problems we face as a political community cannot be solved
through democratic processes.
■ According to Plato, there are inherent problems with democracy:
– When there is no criteria of what competency looks like, democracy generates
conflict; each person will present his own criteria of the good
– Self-rule generates cockiness, overconfidence – the public starts to think too
much of its abilities. The public isn’t aware of its limitations (e.g. that they lack
actual expertise to do politics well).
– With no fixed criteria of competency or expertise, democracies invariably elect
people for bad reasons (flattery, bribery, violence, popularity, good looks…) – the
ship of state is ultimately rudderless; it has become the ship of fools…
■ Plato’s conclusion: Experts should rule.

22.

Milazzo and Mattes, “Looking Good for Election Day”
Milazzo and Mattes, “Looking Good for Election Day: Does Attractiveness Predict Electoral Success in Britain?” British Journal of Politics and
International Relations 18:1 (2015); pp. 161-178.

23.

Who are the experts? Philosophers, of
course.
■
Plato writes, “They don’t know that for the true pilot it is
necessary to pay careful attention to years, seasons,
heaven, stars, winds, and everything that’s proper to the
art if he is really going to be skilled at ruling a ship.”
■
“The true pilot will really be called a stargazer.” – a
metaphor for one who has access to true knowledge
■
What are Plato’s (Socrates’) claims so far:
– Like building a house or operating on someone,
politics is a craft, an art, a skill. It takes years of
study and reflection to become good at.
– Democratic processes will not help us establish
good leaders.
– There are objective aims for political societies to
pursue. All ships use the same celestial landmarks.
– The problem: philosophers seem like bad
candidates to rule. Being stargazers, they easily fall
into wells…