'Where Do you Stand?' Politieke filosofie vanuit een mondiaal perspectief

Politics is often defined as 'power' or 'the art of government', a dangerous game only a few people can play. Today: Xi Jinping, Jeff Bezos, Vladimir Putin, Ursula von der Leyen, Nare'dra Modi, Joe Biden etc. In reality, politics is an inescapable and multi-layered dimension of our life: political decisions affect whom we can marry, our relationship with animals and the environment, how resources are distributed among members of the same society and international actors. So, politics shapes us, and then we shape politics.

This course will help you become a citizen of the world by developing a critical perspective on some of the most fundamental political questions of our time. We will read and discuss together a mix of seminal classical and contemporary texts on crucial political issues, like justice, democracy, colonialism, human and animal rights. Importantly, this course will adopt a global perspective: we will discuss texts written by political thinkers and activists from all around the world, such as India, East Asia, Central and South America.

The course consists of 7 seminars of 2 hours each: one class per week across one academic quarter. The course will be conducted in a seminar fashion, with engaging discussions involving all students. Students will be assigned around 30-40 pages to read per class. Many classes focus on two different texts on a similar topic (the two texts can either come from different political cultures or rival traditions of thought). Prior to the seminar, the Lecturer will help students understand the readings by contextualizing the material and summarizing the key points of each text through a short video recording.

The final grade is calculated as follows:

60%: Individual assessment at the end of the course.

30%: Each student will do one group presentation. The student discusses the relevant text and shows how the text sheds light on contemporary social and political issues. You are strongly encouraged to do your own research and find additional academic articles that bear on your topic.

10%: Student's participation in seminars.

To pass the course, the final grade has to be 6 or higher. All partial grades have to be 5 or higher.

All partial grades are valid only for the current year and are not transferable to the next academic year. If the score of the individual assessment is below 6, a repair option is made available in Q5 (The repair option is not available to those who obtain a sufficient grade). If a student fails the course, they cannot take separate partial grades the following year.