Courses
ANARCHISM
PS
“There are thousands of Marxist academics but very few Anarchist ones. This is not because Anarchism is anti-intellectual so much as because it does not see itself as fundamentally a project of analysis. It is more a moral project.”
—David Graeber
Anarchism is the political theory of government without rulers, or the idea that communities can organize themselves politically without hierarchical authority. Often utopian, there are also many practical and historical examples of anarchic politics and self-organization. Most recently, large elements of the Occupy Wall Street movement have embraced fundamental anarchist ideas. In this course, we explore the intellectual, moral, and practial history of anarchism in order to understand its place in contemporary politics. Readings include: Emma Goldman, Martin Heidegger, Commandante Marcos, David Graeber, and many others.
View the syllabus here.
ARENDT IN DARK TIMES
PS 257
This course is dedicated to reading some of Hannah Arendt’s seminal works with a particular focus on her thinking about citizenship and thinking as these two activities relate to the human condition. We will read carefully Arendt’s The Human Condition, The Crisis in Education, Reflections on Little Rock and other essays. In addition, we will read from authors like Richard Rodriguez and Matthew Crawford who will be speaking at the Annual Arendt Center Conference on “The Educated Citizen.” In addition to Bard undergraduates, the participants will include visiting fellows from the Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking. The course is also open to select students from the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). Beyond scheduled class meetings, students are expected to attend lectures and other events sponsored by the Arendt Center and CCS.
View the syllabus here.
CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
PS 134
This course will provide an introduction to constitutional legal systems, including but not limited to the United States. The class is divided into two parts. The first part of the semester looks at the history of the idea of constitutionalism in Greece, England, and France. The second part explores the United States Constitutional revolution and engages current constitutional controversies, including the rights of individuals during crises, judicial review, and due process.
View the syllabus here.
DEMOCRATIC INNOVATION AND CITIZEN LOTTERIES: FROM ANCIENT ATHENS TO THE FRENCH CLIMATE ASSEMBLY
PS 278
Modern electoral democracies select representatives through voting. But for most of political history, Democratic government was understood to be incompatible with elections. In ancient Greek and early Italian democracies, leaders were chosen by lottery. It was common sense that elections privilege those who have money and education. Indeed, modern electoral representative democracies are specifically designed to elect the elite and exclude everyday citizens from the activity of self-government. In this class we review the history of democracy from its ancient roots in a lottery based system to the emergence and dominance of modern electoral democracies. We then approach the emerging movement to include lottery-based citizen assemblies as well as other democratic innovations such as participatory budgeting in Brazil, and “digital” democracy in Taiwan. We will study recent citizen assemblies from around the world, including France, Ireland, Colombia, and Canada. We will look at the newly established permanent citizen assembly in Paris. And we will ask: Can lottery based assemblies help decrease polarization? Do they have an effect on governmental policy? Are these innovations conducive to certain policy issues but ineffective at solving others?
View the syllabus here.
DIGNITY AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS TRADITION
HRP 235
We live at a time when the claim to human rights is both taken for granted and regularly disregarded. One reason for the disconnect between the reality and the ideal of human rights is that human rights have never been given a secure philosophical foundation. Indeed, many have argued that absent a religiously grounded faith in human dignity, there is no legal ground for human rights. Might it be that human rights are simply well-meaning aspirations without legal or philosophical foundation? And what is dignity anyway? Ought we to abandon talk about dignity and admit that human rights are groundless? Against this view, human rights advocates, international lawyers, and constitutional judges continue to speak of dignity as the core value of the international legal system. Indeed, lawyers in Germany and South Africa are developing a "dignity jurisprudence" that might guarantee human rights on the foundation of human dignity. Is it possible, therefore, to develop a secular and legally meaningful idea of dignity that can offer a ground for human rights? This class explores both the modern challenge to dignity and human rights as well as attempts to resuscitate a new and more coherent secular ideal of dignity as a legally valid guarantee of human rights. In addition to texts including Hannah Arendt's book, Origins of Totalitarianism, we read legal cases, and documents from international law.
View the syllabus here.
FREE SPEECH
HR/LIT 218
An introduction to debates about freedom of expression. What is ‘freedom of speech’? Is there a right to say anything? Why? We will investigate who has had this right, where it has come from, and what it has had to do in particular with politics, academic freedom, literature. and the arts. What powers does speech have, who has the power to speak, and for what? Debates about censorship, hate speech, the First Amendment and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be obvious starting points, but we will also explore some less obvious questions: about faith and the secular, confession and torture, surveillance, the emergence of political agency. In asking about the status of the speaking human subject, we will look at the ways in which the subject of rights, and indeed the thought of human rights itself, derives from a 'literary' experience. These questions will be examined, if not answered, across a variety of literary, philosophical, legal and political texts, with a heavy dose of case studies (many of them happening right now) and readings in contemporary critical and legal theory.
View the syllabus here.
HANNAH ARENDT SEMINAR
PS 420
This course is dedicated to reading some of Hannah Arendt's seminal works with a particular focus on her thinking about science and art as these two human activities relate to the human condition. In addition to close readings of some of Arendt's most important books and essays, we will also explore the challenge that scientific rationality and artificial intelligence pose to the humanity of humans. In conjunction with the 2010 Arendt Center Conference on "Human Being in an Inhuman Age," we will ask how Arendt's work helps us to think about the ways that automation, artificial intelligence, and rational machines are transforming the very nature of what it means to be human. In addition to Bard undergraduates, the participants will include visiting fellows from the Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking. The course is also open to select students from the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). Beyond scheduled class meetings, students are expected to attend lectures and other events sponsored by the Arendt Center and CCS.
View the syllabus here.
HUMANISM, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THE HUMAN CONDITION
PS 380
In 1946, just after the defeat of the Nazis, a French schoolteacher Jean Beaufret wrote a letter to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Beaufret asked two questions: First, How are we in the wake of the Holocaust to restore a sense to the word “humanism”? And second, How are we to understand the relationship between philosophy and ethics? Heidegger’s response, later published as “The Letter on Humanism,” is one of the great efforts to think through the ethical and philosophical significance of the human being. For Heidegger, if we are to preserve the dignity of the human, we must forgo all ‘isms’ including humanism; we must resist the urge to define a human essence and instead seek the dignity of the human outside of all doctrines and systems. In doing so, Heidegger challenges the foundations of modern humanisms including human rights and liberal social democracy. In this class we will read Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’ as well as works by Jean Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, and Peter Sloterdijk to ask how, if at all, we can assign dignity to humanity in the 21st century.
View the syllabus here.
INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL THINKING
PS 115
From Plato to Nietzsche, great thinkers in the Western tradition have asked about the nature and practice of political action. Thinking about politics is, knowingly or not, conducted against the background of this shared tradition. This is no less true of political thought that aims to break away from "the classics" than of political thought that finds in them a constant resource for both critical and constructive thinking. This course explores fundamental questions of politics through a core body of writings. At its center (about 7 weeks of a 14 week semester) will be a sustained and close reading of Plato's Republic. Thinking with Plato and also with complementary texts, we reflect upon key political concepts such as justice, democracy, authority, and "the political." We also explore such enduring questions as the relationship between the state and the individual; the conditions for peaceful political order; and the connection between morality and politics. This course is required for all political studies majors.
View the syllabus here.
RADICAL AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
PS 358
This seminar is a political philosophical exploration of radical American democracy. While political characterizations of democracy see it as a form of government, this course explores the essence of democracy as a specifically modern way of life. To do so, it turns to some great thinkers of American democracy such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Ellison. What unites these radical democrats is the conviction that democracy is a thoughtful practice of individuals rather than an institutional form of governance. As an ideal of radical individualism, American democratic thought offers, perhaps surprisingly, an aristocratic critique of the limits of democratic government even as it, seen from another side, makes possible our culture of narcissistic consumerism. Our aim is to understand the democratic spirit of radical individualism that has proven so seductive and powerful since its modern birth in the American revolution. In conjunction with the Arendt Center Conference on Revitalizing Democracy, students will attend the conference on Oct. 14-15 and engage with some of the speakers.
View the syllabus here.
THE CRISIS OF EXPERT RULE
PS 386
Today, it is almost unthinkable to imagine regulators and political leaders who lack university and technical training. And yet, much of the populist anger rising around the world can be understood as a rejection of expert rule. We saw this battle over the rule by experts in the impeachment hearings of President Trump, where it became obvious that the real issue was the conflict between an impartial civil services and the populist politics of President Trump. Then Covid-19 further exposed the radical distrust in expert driven governance. Over and again, we are told to “Listen to the experts." And yet the President and many of his supporters deride experts. This rejection of scientific knowledge is shocking; and yet, there are problems with expert governance. First, experts have a poor record of being right even as they continue to assert the authority to set policy. Second, the rule of the experts gains power as countries become more centralized and in need of administration. When people are told society is too complex to be governed by anyone but experts, they are disempowered. The result is animosity and resentment against experts that may well, in Hannah Arendt's words, “harbor all the murderous traits of a racial antagonism." Third, public health experts push for public policies so that the sick must die alone and be buried without funerals. Experts are thus complicit in what Giorgio Agamben calls the rule of bare life and what Hannah Arendt calls the victory of animal laborans. In this course, we explore how expert discourses drive us to abandon fundamental human connections that make human life meaningful and privilege life over a meaningful human life. Finally, we consider proposals for Citizen Assemblies that bring non-expert citizens into the process of governing in democratic states.
View the syllabus here.
THE FOUNDATION OF LAW
PS 267
Corporate executives hire high-priced lawyers to flout the law with impunity. Indigent defendants are falsely convicted, and even executed for crimes they did not commit. We say that law is the institutional embodiment of justice. And yet, it is equally true that law, as it is practiced, seems to have little connection to justice. As the novelist William Gaddis writes: "Justice? You get justice in the next world. In this world, you have the law." This course explores the apparent disconnect between law and justice. Can contemporary legal systems offer justice? Can we, today, still speak of a duty to obey the law? Is it possible for law to do justice?
Through readings of legal cases as well as political, literary, and philosophical texts, we seek to understand the problem of administering justice as it emerges in the context of contemporary legal institutions. Texts will include selections from Dostoevsky, Twain, Melville, Plato, Blackstone, Holmes, Milton, Kant, and others.
View the syllabus here.
THE POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP
PS 100
Many of us hear “citizen” and think of a fairly concrete form of political membership – that you are a citizen or you are not. But the history of citizenship in the United States has been one in which citizenship has been subject to much more contestation than that binary allows for. Examining topics including voting, incarceration, militarization, immigration, and education under the broader trajectories of race, gender, and class, the class will explore the entanglements of citizenship with the struggles over power. We will consider how “citizenship” in the United States has been and is uneven today, unsettled, and often more of a political project than any individual’s status. In this way, our goal is to acquire a situated and critical understanding of the dilemmas of citizenship in the US and the inequalities, injustices as well as opportunities citizenship has come to be associated with.
View the syllabus here.
TRUTH AND POLITICS
PS 238
From Plato to Nietzsche, great thinkers in the Western tradition have asked about the nature and practice of political action. Thinking about politics is, knowingly or not, conducted against the background of this shared tradition. This is no less true of political thought that aims to break away from "the classics" than of political thought that finds in them a constant resource for both critical and constructive thinking. This course explores fundamental questions of politics through a core body of writings. At its center (about 7 weeks of a 14 week semester) will be a sustained and close reading of Plato's Republic. Thinking with Plato and also with complementary texts, we reflect upon key political concepts such as justice, democracy, authority, and "the political." We also explore such enduring questions as the relationship between the state and the individual; the conditions for peaceful political order; and the connection between morality and politics. This course is required for all political studies majors.
View the syllabus here.
RADICAL AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
PS 358
This seminar is a political philosophical exploration of radical American democracy. While political characterizations of democracy see it as a form of government, this course explores the essence of democracy as a specifically modern way of life. To do so, it turns to some great thinkers of American democracy such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Ellison. What unites these radical democrats is the conviction that democracy is a thoughtful practice of individuals rather than an insitutional form of governance. As an ideal of radical individualism, American democratic thought offers, perhaps surprisingly, an aristocratic critique of the limits of democratic government even as it, seen from another side, makes possible our culture of narcissistic consumerism. Our aim is to understand the democratic spirit of radical individualism that has proven so seductive and powerful since its modern birth in the American revolution.
View the syllabus here.
REVENGE AND THE LAW
PS 268
To speak of revenge in a course on law is to lay bare an open wound at the heart of law. On the one hand, law is built upon the exclusion of vengeance. On the other hand, revenge remains a constant presence in criminal law. In spite of the best efforts of philosophers, moralists, and jurists to banish it, revenge remains an irrepressible social and legal force. This course asks the question: Can revenge be a just motive for criminal punishment? By considering those in the victims' rights movements who argue for the importance and justice of "legalizing" and thus legitimating revenge, we ask whether justice is actually something other than legalized revenge. To do so, we explore the phenomenon of revenge as it has been practiced, imagined, and conceived throughout history. Through a close reading of texts, films, and works of art, we will ask: why does revenge persist as an ideal of justice despite the best efforts of lawyers to banish it?
View the syllabus here.
REVOLUTION AND PROTEST
PS 219
This course will model an informed, scholarly, and humane dialogue about the Hong Kong-China relationship in light of both the extradition-bill controversy and concerns over the city’s autonomy; but it will, moreover, also examine the larger social, cultural, and historical relationship between Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region, and the Peoples Republic of China. We will explore these questions within the context of an inquiry into the question of violence, protests, mass movements, and revolutions in the modern age. The course will inquire into violence and revolution, civil society and human rights within an emerging globalized surveillance society. We will read works including: Hannah Arendt, Plato, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paul Tillich, René Girard, Stanley Milgram, David Graeber and Micah White. Readings on China and Hong Kong will include texts by Wang Hui, Daniel Vukovich, Alice Poon, and Lui Tai Lok.
The course is part of a year-long project of dialogue and partnership with scholars and students at Hong Kong University and will provide opportunities for interaction with them. On some Monday evenings from 8-10 pm we will have guest speakers from Hong Kong and conversations with students in Hong Kong. There may also be opportunities to travel to Hong Kong following the semester to meet with students there.
View the syllabus here.
VIRTUAL AND PHYSICAL REALITY: WAYS OF IMMEDIATE KNOWING
PHIL 324
Much of modern day experience remains rooted in the understanding of ourselves as fundamentally distinct and separate from what surrounds us. We lose ourselves in books, escape into t,v. and the internet, and socialize online. Increasingly, we live in virtual worlds. While the rise of the scientific and virtual worlds has led to a great range of advances, most notably in the empirical sciences, the world wide web, and globalization, it has closed off other more physical, local, and embodied ways of feeling and experiencing the things and the people with whom we share this world. In this course, we want to explore various approaches that go beyond the metaphysics of separation. We want to take seriously expressions like: ‘to know something in our heart’, or ‘to have a gut feeling’, and ‘Im just not feeling into it.’ Through readings but also through meditative walks and reflective exercises, we aim to explore the potential truth inherent in embodied and physical ways of knowing. We will cover a wide range of sources - from romanticism to phenomenology to Buddhism and other wisdom traditions - to illuminate the theme. We aim to incorporate poetry and visual arts to explore the range of perceptions that different practices can reveal. This class will also require some outdoor activities, weather permitting.
View the syllabus here.