Course Description for Politics and Reason

Can political and moral judgments be rationally defended? Can human action and political and social practices be studied through the methods of the natural sciences or are the political and social sciences essentially humanistic disciplines? What is the relation between political and moral judgment and political and social explanation? Is there such a thing as human nature or are the actions of men and women the product of behavioral conditioning or the culture in which they live?

This course seeks to explore some contemporary answers to these related questions, which may fairly be said to be among the central intellectual and moral problems of the current age. In the course of exploring these questions, a variety of types of political and social inquiry will be considered. And a number of moral views will also be examined, including: liberalism, emotivism, historicism and existentialism.

We begin with a study of the two dominant traditions of thought on these issues: naturalism and interpretavism. In each case we first study the metaphysical and epistemological conceptions of each tradition of thought, particularly as they inform the understanding of political and social science and of humankind presented by each view. Then we turn to an examination of the political and moral conclusions that follow from these conceptions. We first consider naturalism, the view that political and social science may be carried on in essentially the same manner as natural science. We will see that while the classic 17th century statements of this view provide a foundation of liberal political and moral thought, contemporary versions of this position deny the possibility of a rational defense of our political and moral judgments. Then we turn to historicism and interpretavism, the view that political and social science is essentially a humanistic pursuit. We will see that these views provide some ground for the defense of our political and moral views. But the historicist conception of morality that follows from interpretavism is ultimately inadequate because it limits the role of rational debate and argument in our political and moral choices.

Finally in the last third of the course, we will consider a new view of these matters, critical interpretavism and pragmatic rationalism, that is currently being worked out by a number of philosophers and political scientists. This view views attempts to synthesize certain aspects of naturalism and interpretavism while holding that a conception of human nature must be a central element of both political and social science and moral and political evaluation. Thus this new conception holds that reasoning about our political and moral beliefs is not only possible but intertwined with the activity of explaining political and social life. And it provides a rational defense of human rights, including the right to consent to government, to democratic government and to civil liberty.

Politics and Reason

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