SemesterFall Semester, 2020
DepartmentInternational Master's Program in International Studies, First Year International Master's Program in International Studies, Second Year
Course NameInternational Relations and Political Philosophy
Instructor
Credit3.0
Course TypeElective
Prerequisite
Course Objective
Course Description
Course Schedule

Week of September 14: Introduction



Week of September 21: Sun-tze and Lord Shang



The Art of War and The Book of Lord Shang



Suggested secondary readings:



McCready, Douglas M. "Learning from Sun Tzu." Military Review 83, no. 3 (2003): 85.



Warner, M., 2006. The divine skein: Sun Tzu on intelligence. Intelligence and National Security21(4), pp.483-492.



Spengler, Joseph J. "Kau?ilya, Plato, Lord Shang: Comparative Political Economy." proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1969): 450-457.



 



Week of September 28: Thucydides,



The Peloponnesian War, especially early discussion of origins of the war, as well as 1.21-3, 2.34-46 (Funeral Oration), 2.50-54 (The Plague), 3.36-49 (The Mytilenian Debate), 5.84-116 (The Melian Dialogue).



 



Suggested secondary readings:



 



Allison, Graham. "The Thucydides Trap: are the US and China headed for war?." The Atlantic 24 (2015).



 



Welch, David A. "Why International Relations theorists should stop reading Thucydides." Review of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 301-319.



 



Forde, Steven. "Varieties of realism: Thucydides and Machiavelli." The Journal of Politics 54, no. 2 (1992): 372-393.



 



Lebow, Richard Ned. "Thucydides the constructivist." American Political Science Review 95, no. 3 (2001): 547-560.



 



Monten, Jonathan. "Thucydides and modern realism." International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2006): 3-25.



 



Week of October 5: Plato



The Republic, The Laws (Book 1)



Suggested secondary readings:



Kratochwil, Friedrich. "Thrasymmachos revisited: on the relevance of norms and the study of law for International Relations." Journal of International Affairs (1984): 343-356.



Arnopoulos, Paris. "Plato and Aristotle on War and Peace." Philosophia: Yearbook of the Research Center for Greek Philosophy at the Academy of Athens 27, no. 97-98 (1997): 142-152.



 



Week of October 12: Aristotle



The Politics



 



Suggested secondary readings:



 



Molloy, Seán. "Aristotle, Epicurus, Morgenthau and the political ethics of the lesser evil." Journal of International Political Theory 5, no. 1 (2009): 94-112.



 



Lunstroth, John. "Linking Virtue and Justice: Aristotle on the Melian Dialogue." Int'l Legal Theory 12 (2006): 99.



 



Week of October 19: Augustine and Aquinas



The City of God (Bks I, IV, VI [sections 17-24], XIX [sections 11-17]), Summa Theologica (II-II, Q 40; II-II, Q 64, articles 6-8)



 



Suggested secondary readings:



 



Loriaux, Michael. "The realists and Saint Augustine: Skepticism, psychology, and moral action in international relations thought." International Studies Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1992): 401-420.



 



Lee, Thomas H. "The Augustinian Just War Tradition and the Problem of Pretext in Humanitarian Intervention." Fordham Int'l LJ 28 (2004): 756.



 



Zwitter, Andrej, and Michael Hoelzl. "Augustine on War and Peace." Peace Review 26, no. 3 (2014): 317-324.



 



Johnson, James Turner. "Aquinas and Luther on War and Peace: Sovereign Authority and the Use of Armed Force." Journal of Religious Ethics 31, no. 1 (2003): 3-20.



 



Week of October 26: Machiavelli



The Prince (chapters 1-3, 5-6, 8-9, 15-19, 21, 24-26), The Discourses (I.2-14)



Suggested secondary readings:



Forde, Steven. "International realism and the science of politics: Thucydides, Machiavelli, and neorealism." International Studies Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1995): 141-160.



Cesa, Marco, ed. Machiavelli on International Relations. OUP Oxford, 2014.



Alker Jr, Hayward R. "The humanistic moment in international studies: reflections on Machiavelli and Las Casas: 1992 presidential address." International Studies Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1992): 347-371.



Wong, Benjamin. "Hans Morgenthau's Anti-Machiavellian Machiavellianism." Millennium 29, no. 2 (2000): 389-409.



Week of November 2: No class, midterm assignment due



Week of November 9:



Midterm; paper due November 13 via Moodle



Week of November 16



Vitoria and Erasmus



De Indis De Jure Belli, Dulce Bellum Inexpertis



Suggested secondary readings:



Cavallar, Georg. The rights of strangers: Theories of international hospitality, the global community and political justice since Vitoria. Routledge, 2017.



Anghie, Antony. "Francisco de Vitoria and the colonial origins of international law." Social & legal studies 5, no. 3 (1996): 321-336.



 



Week of November 23: Hugo Grotius



The Law of War and Peace



Suggested Secondary Readings:



Bull, Hedley. "The importance of Grotius in the study of international relations." In Grotius and Law, pp. 317-345. Routledge, 2017.



Cutler, A. Claire. "The ‘Grotain tradition’ in international relations." Review of International Studies 17, no. 1 (1991): 41-65.



 



Week of November 30: Samuel Pufendorf



On the Duties of Man and Citizen



Suggested Secondary Readings:



Devetak, Richard. "Between Kant and Pufendorf: humanitarian intervention, statist anti-cosmopolitanism and critical international theory." Review of international studies 33, no. S1 (2007): 151-174.



Boucher, David. "Resurrecting Pufendorf and capturing the Westphalian moment." Review of International Studies 27, no. 4 (2001): 557-577.



Week of December 7: Thomas Hobbes



Leviathan (esp. chaps 13-14, 17-18, 21)



Suggested Secondary Readings:



Williams, Michael C. "Hobbes and international relations: a reconsideration." International organization 50, no. 2 (1996): 213-236.



Bull, Hedley. "Hobbes and the international anarchy." Social Research (1981): 717-738.



Hanson, Donald W. "Thomas Hobbes's “highway to peace”." International Organization 38, no. 2 (1984): 329-354.



Skinner, Quentin. "Hobbes and the purely artificial person of the state." Journal of Political Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1999): 1-29.



Week of December 14: John Locke



Second Treatise (particularly chaps. 1-3, 7-9, 16)



Suggested Secondary Readings:



Cox, Richard Howard. Locke on war and peace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).



Williams, Howard. "John Locke and International Politics." In International Relations and the Limits of Political Theory, pp. 90-109. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1996.



Ward, Lee. "Locke on the moral basis of international relations." American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 3 (2006): 691-705.



Week of December 21: J.J. Rousseau



Second Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, The State of War, Comments on Treatise of the Abbe St. Pierre



Suggested Secondary Readings:



Williams, Michael C. "Rousseau, realism and realpolitik." Millennium 18, no. 2 (1989): 185-203.



Knutsen, Torbjørn L. "Re-reading Rousseau in the post-Cold War world." Journal of Peace Research 31, no. 3 (1994): 247-262.



Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Stanley Hoffmann, and David P. Fidler. "Rousseau on international relations." (1991).



Hoffmann, Stanley. "Rousseau on war and peace." American Political Science Review 57, no. 2 (1963): 317-333.



Week of December 28: Immanuel Kant



Perpetual Peace, Essay on Theory and Practice



 



Suggested Secondary Readings:



 



Hurrell, Andrew. "Kant and the Kantian paradigm in international relations." Review of International Studies 16, no. 3 (1990): 183-205.



 



Williams, Michael C. "Reason and Realpolitik: Kant's “Critique of International Politics”." Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 25, no. 1 (1992): 99-120.



 



Harrison, Ewan. "Waltz, Kant and systemic approaches to international relations." Review of International Studies 28, no. 1 (2002): 143-162.



 



Cederman, Lars-Erik. "Back to Kant: Reinterpreting the democratic peace as a macrohistorical learning process." American Political Science Review 95, no. 1 (2001): 15-31.



 



Week of January 4: V.I. Lenin



Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism



Suggested Secondary Readings:



Halliday, Fred. "The pertinence of imperialism." In Historical Materialism and Globalisation, pp. 75-89. Routledge, 2016.



Willoughby, John. "Evaluating the Leninist theory of imperialism." Science & Society (1995): 320-338.



Bodenheimer, Susanne. "Dependency and imperialism: The roots of Latin American underdevelopment." Nacla Newsletter 4, no. 3 (1970): 18-27.



Marshall, Alexander. "Lenin's Imperialism Nearly 100 Years on: An Outdated Paradigm?." Critique 42, no. 3 (2014): 317-333.



McDonough, Terrence. "Lenin, imperialism, and the stages of capitalist development." Science & Society (1995): 339-367.


Teaching Methods
Teaching Assistant
Requirement/Grading

  1. A five-page paper, due the end of midterm week, which outlines a question or problem arising from the ideas of a particular philosopher. Worth 25% of total grade.

  2. An eighteen-page paper, due at the end of the term, which addresses some broad question arising from the writings of one or more of the philosophers under discussion. Worth 60% of total grade.

  3. Attendance and in-class discussion. Worth 15% of total grade.


Textbook & Reference
Urls about Course
Attachment