Political Science 401 Histories of Political Theories I

Prof M.A. Orlie (m-orlie@uiuc.edu)

UIUC Fall 2001

Wednesdays, 6:30-8:50, 394 Lincoln

 Ethics, Texts, and Contexts: Athens, Rome, Jerusalem

A good deal of contemporary political and social theory begins by reconceiving the “subject" (the embodied individual of political and social life) and our relationship to context.  In particular, explanations of individual action by reference to "good character" or "sufficient will" have become increasingly suspect or are rejected outright.  These critiques of the subject, in turn, often flow out of critiques of canonical conceptions of the text and flow into alternative ways of reading texts and their relationship to context.  What, more exactly, are we criticizing when we challenge canonical texts and classical conceptions? What are the available alternatives?  Are some contemporary interpreters right to find resources within classical texts for reading anew ethics, texts, and contexts?  This seminar will provide scholarly background and theoretical resources for approaching these and related questions through study of Platonic, Aristotelian, Hellenic, and Scriptural texts and some of their most provocative contemporary interpreters.

In recent decades, "Athens and Jerusalem" has become a prominent trope for purportedly competing cultural and theoretical traditions.  In fact, various representations of the West's relation to "Hellenism," "Hebraism," and "Christianity" are ubiquitous.  Opinions differ as to whether the comparison between Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem are false and mystifying oppositions, or representative of paradigmatic cultural alternatives and decisive contexts.  We will begin by situating ourselves theoretically by reference to this debate, and contextually by reference to these cities through illuminating pictures of Athens and Rome and Jerusalem between the third century bce and the fourth century ce.  Throughout the semester we shall return to this frame of reference as we read our primary texts.

I will draw our representative classical texts from: Plato's Republic; selections from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Rhetoric; Genesis as well as select rabbinic midrash; Paul's letters to the Romans and Galatians; Augustine's Confessions and selections from his The City of God; as well as representatives of Hellenic ethical traditions.  Among contemporary interpreters of these texts I presently plan for us to study: Boyarin; Connolly; Derrida; Foucault; Gadamer; Hadot; Hartman; Irigaray; Kristeva; MacIntyre; Nussbaum; and Rose.  I will also provide necessary background by reference to certain capstone historical texts (for example, Peter Brown's The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity and Wayne A. Meek's The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul).

We will delimit this expansive literature by focusing upon a particular theme: conceptions of ethical political practice as work upon self and community.  Although the seminar will be intellectually demanding, I presuppose no prior expertise on the part of participants.