Histoire de la pensée politique

This course provides an overview of the history of Western political thought, focusing on several key controversies that mark its progression.

It takes as its starting point the Athenian Golden Age. He examines the empowerment of political thought and the accompanying controversy over the status of democracy. He then focuses on modern political thought, tracing its conceptual jolts through the study of the debates that animated the English, French, industrial and Russian revolutions. It also discusses the theoretical justifications and critiques of political enterprises that have shaped our recent history, such as colonization, totalitarianism, and climate change.

At the end of this course, students will have a global vision of the trajectory of Western political thought. In particular, they will have examined certain crucial moments of political crisis and will have been able to observe directly in the relevant texts which arguments won the day and justified major political bifurcations.

The objective of this course is threefold.

On the one hand, it is to allow students to become acquainted - by themselves and by immersing themselves directly in the primary sources - with the most famous texts of political thought.

This reading of historical texts does not only aim at allowing them to build up a general historical-political culture. It also aims to enable them, and this is the second objective, to identify and discover in their original context a set of concepts (such as sovereignty, rights, the nation) that are still in use in contemporary analyses of politics, in similar or largely reworked forms. This genealogical perspective will allow them to manipulate these concepts with more critical distance.

Finally, the course will offer students the opportunity to work on certain cross-cutting skills necessary for any academic career. They will be asked not only to read ancient texts carefully to extract their meaning but also to summarize one of them at each session in the form of a reading sheet. During the practical sessions, directed by the course assistant, students will also be required to present their interpretation of the texts orally to the class twice.

The course will be built around an interactive exchange between the students and the professor to stimulate their critical thinking, their ability to argue and debate, and their capacity to appropriate complex concepts.

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

There is no required knowledge or skill.

This is a teaching seminar given for three hours per week during the first semester.

The first session will be devoted to the presentation of the pedagogical device and to the exposition of the reading methodology that will be adopted during the following sessions.

Sessions 2 to 8 will be presented as ex cathedra lessons. After introducing the historical context of each text, the teacher will briefly discuss its content, originality and main arguments in front of the rest of the group.

During practical sessions directed by the course assistant (Romain Biesemans), each student will have to present orally, in front of the rest of the group, his or her interpretation of one of the texts of the reading portfolio. The student will also prepare a series of questions raised by the text, which he or she will address to the other students in the group in order to provoke an argumentative discussion on its content. These historical texts of political thought are collected and compiled in a reading portfolio that will be accessible on the Virtual University (see Bibliography).

During the last session, one hour will be devoted to answering any questions students may have about the exam.
 

Contribution to the teaching profile

At the end of this seminar, the student will have acquired :
- an analytical and academic approach based on methodological rigor
- advanced writing and oral presentation skills in French
- an openness to the world.

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

A definitive bibliography of required readings will be provided at the beginning of the semester.

A syllabus is available at the Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles.

Here is a (non-definitive) bibliography of the texts covered:

• Thucydide (-400), Histoire de la guerre du Péloponnèse, Livre II, 35-46.
• Platon (-380), La République, Livre VIII, 555b-566d.
• Machiavel (1532), Le Prince, chapitres 15, 17, 18, 20 et 25.
• Thomas Hobbes (1651), Léviathan, chapitres 13 et 16-18.
• John Locke (1690), Second traité sur le gouvernement civil, extraits tirés de Pierre Manent (ed.), Les Libéraux, Paris, Hachette, 1986 : 151-193.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762), Du Contrat social, Livre I, ch. 1, 6-8 et livre II, ch. 1-4.
• Immanuel Kant (1784), Réponse à la question : qu’est-ce que les Lumières ?
• Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1789), Qu’est-ce que le Tiers-État ?, chapitres 1-3.
• Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme et du citoyen
• Olympe de Gouges (1791), « Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne ».
• May Wollstonecraft (1792), A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
• Toussaint Louverture (1797), Extrait du rapport adressé au Directoire exécutif.
• Frederick Douglass (1852), What to the Slave is the Fourth of July ?
• Aimé Césaire (1950), Discours sur le colonialisme.
• Adam Smith (1776), Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, chapitres 1-2 et 10.
• Karl Marx et Friedrich Engels (1848), Manifeste du parti communiste, chapitres 1 et 2.
• Rosa Luxemburg (1904), « Centralisme et démocratie », partie 1.
• John Rawls (1971), A Theory of Justice, chapter 1.
• Claude Lefort (1981), L’Invention démocratique, chapitre 2.
• Angela Davis (1983), Women, Race and Class.

Course notes

• Syllabus
• Université virtuelle

Additional information

The course will be divided into two types of sessions: lectures with the teacher and practical work with the assistant.

During the lectures, the teacher will take care to place the selected texts in their historical context, to explain the stakes of the discussion in which they participate, the different positions of the protagonists of the political debate of the time and finally to briefly expose the biographical trajectory of the author.

During the course of the practical work, students will be asked to present orally for 15 to 20 minutes the main arguments of the texts they have studied. In particular, they will be required to:

- Present the general structure of the text: what are the different tenses of the text? What is the logic of their succession?
- Identify the main ideas of the text, trying to distinguish paradigms and concepts that would be particularly structuring.
- Discern the way in which these ideas are situated in the epistemological registers of constancy on the one hand, and normative/prescriptive on the other.
- If time permits, assess the significance and relevance of these ideas to current issues.

In addition to the oral presentation, students will be asked to write a short "reading sheet" (minimum 1 page, maximum 2 pages) for each class session - with the exception of the last one - that summarizes the different elements of the text. There will be a total of 6 reading cards to be written. This "reading sheet" will be submitted on the Virtual University before each session. It will be reread by the assistant who will provide each student with a constructive evaluation of its content and form.

The seminar includes about fifteen texts (the number may vary according to the pace of our progress). Each student will have to make two oral presentations. The distribution of the texts among the students will be done during the first class session.

Failure to hand in a reading sheet or to present a summary of the text at the oral presentation without valid justification may result in the withdrawal of several points from the overall grade.

The assistant for this course is Romain Biesemans.

 

Contacts

Professor :

Martin Deleixhe - martin.deleixhe@ulb.be

Assistant-professor :

Romain Biesemans - romain.biesemans@ulb.be

Campus

Charleroi Ville Haute

Method(s) of evaluation

• Personal work
• Oral examination
• Oral presentation

Personal work

Oral examination

Oral presentation

The final grade (out of 20) is composed of two separate grades:

1°) A mark awarded after an oral examination held during the January session on the mastery of the syllabus content and the content of the reading portfolio texts. This grade counts for 80% of the final grade (i.e. 16 points out of 20). Part of the last session of the first term will be devoted to questions of comprehension by the students on the subject matter of this exam.

2°) A mark attributed on the other hand for the participation to the pedagogical device. This will count for 20% of the final grade (4 points out of 20). It will take into consideration three elements
- The two oral presentations of the text synthesis
- The six reading sheets
- Participation in discussions and exchanges during the lecture and practical work

 

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

Oral exam: 80% (16 points out of 20).

Course participation: 20% (4 points out of 20).

 

Language(s) of evaluation

• french
• (if applicable english )