American Political Thought

POLS 324 | MWF 1pm-2:05pm | Dr. Jose Marichal

Instructor Information

Dr. Jose Marichal
Contact: marichal@callutheran.edu
Office Hours: via Zoom 12-12:30 T-W-TH OBO

Course Goals

This course serves two goals. First, it introduces you to the key political thinkers in or about the United States from the 17th century up to the present day. But secondly, we will spend our 16 weeks examining the question “who should we be”? I put the emphasis on the “we” because any study of political thought is a study of our common life together. This means engaging with some fundamental question like: What does it mean to be free? Who is entitled to this freedom? What is legitimate authority and force? What does it mean to achieve equality? What is a nation and do we need to love it? What is the self, and what shapes ours (and other’s) conception of it? We will explore these ideas and try to develop our own perspective on these questions through them and their critics. We will explore both the “traditional canon” (Hobbes, Rousseau, Mill, Rawls, etc.) and the critiques of their ideas from both Western and Non-Western thinkers.

Assignments & Assessment

  • Blackboard Participation = 25 points
  • 3 essay exams x 25 points = 75 points

Course Schedule

Week 1: Two Foundings: Jamestown and Plymouth

Aug 30 Introduction
Sept 1 John Winthrop and Puritan Political Thought
Sept 3 Captain John Smith and Slavery in Jamestown

Week 2: Franklin and the rise of early American economy

Sept 6 Labor Day - No Class
Sept 8 Thomas McCraw On Capitalism / Benjamin Franklin
Sept 10 Max Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, ch. 2

Week 3: America and the development of modern Natural Rights

Sept 13 Thomas Jefferson and Declaration of Independence
Sept 15 Thomas Paine
Sept 17 Leo Strauss On Natural Rights, lecture 6 only

Week 4: Constitution and its Re-ratification

Sept 20 Federalists v. Antifederalist
Sept 22 Ratification Debate
Sept 24 Dahl, How Democratic is the American Constitution? / Democratic Performance Indicators / Abigail Adams letters to John Adams

Week 5: The Political Culture of America

Sept 27 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America and Tocqueville on the three races
Sept 29 Putnam, Bowling Alone
Oct 1 No reading

Week 6: The Issue of Native Americans

Oct 4 Andrew Jackson Exam 1 Due
Oct 6 Andrew Jackson (film)
Oct 8 Trail of Tears (film)

Week 7: The Issue of Slavery

Oct 11 Trail of Tears Film
Oct 13 Calhoun Speech / George Fitzhugh - Cannibals All! / Lincoln's Speeches
Oct 15 Douglass Young, and DuBois / What to a Slave is the 4th of July? / Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments

Week 8: Modern Issues of Diversity, Race, and Immigration

Oct 18 Malcolm X
Oct 20 Martin Luther King
Oct 22 Paz and Huntington, Mexico and the US / Film: My Family

Week 9: Unity and Diversity in the US

Oct 25 Alan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind (introduction)
Oct 27 Rorty on Bloom and Priority of Democracy
Oct 29 Fish / Taylor

Week 10: The Anti-Democratic Impulse in American Thought

Nov 1 King and Smith (2005) Racial Orders in American Political Development / Exam 2 Handed Out
Nov 3 Arendt - The Origins of Totalitarianism (Chapter 11)
Nov 5 Hofstadter - The Paranoid Style in American Politics

Week 11: Patriotism and Nationalism

Nov 8 Martha Nussbaum, For Love of Country / Exam 2 Due
Nov 10 Kwami Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitan Patriot
Nov 12 David Miller on Nationalism, chapter 3

Week 12: The Liberal Tradition

Nov 15 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Four Freedoms, A Second Bill of Rights
Nov 17 Dewey - Liberalism and Social Action
Nov 19 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique and Hooks “Feminist Theory from Margin to Center”

Week 13

Nov 22-26 Thanksgiving Break

Week 14: American Conservative/Neoliberal Thought

Nov 29 Milton Friedman
Dec 1 Kirk - The Conservative Mind - Up to Chapter 7
Dec 3 Kirk - The Conservative Mind - Rest of book

Week 15: Modern Challenges

Dec 6 Michael Sandel / Exam 3 handed out
Dec 8 Picketty Lecture
Dec 10 Lawrence Lessing
Dec 13 Exam 3 Due
Finals Week Reflection Day