Ders

There are two sets of fundamental questions this course aims to examine. The first set questions the basis of political obligation: How does a political community get constituted? What are the criteria by which a government can be judged to be "just"? What are the conditions under which civil disobedience is not only legitimate but also necessary? Reading Hobbes, Locke and Mill will help us to answer this first set of questions. The second set of problematize the basic assumptions of the liberal political philosophers. Particularly, the categories of the "individual" and "reason/rationality" come under close scrutiny through close readings of works by the likes of Adorno, Horkheimer and Foucault.