Trace modern political thought from Reformation resistance and sovereignty through liberalism, social contract, Marxism, anarchism, war, totalitarianism, and twentieth-century debates over liberty, coercion, property, state power, and social order.
Explain how resistance theorists, Bodin, Althusius, Grotius, and Hobbes locate and limit sovereign authority in different ways.
Evaluate competing accounts of freedom, social contract, political obligation, representation, and resistance in Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Burke, and Mill.
Compare arguments about self-ownership, appropriation, convention, redistribution, exploitation, possession, and common ownership across liberal, Marxist, and anarchist traditions.
Identify how individualist, mutualist, collectivist, communist, syndicalist, and voluntaryist thinkers differ over markets, authority, association, and social coordination.
Analyze how warfare, nationalism, corporatism, political religion, and mass mobilization contribute to centralized power and totalitarian forms of politics.
Assess contrasting arguments about coercion, spontaneous order, minimal government, distributive justice, natural rights, and the relationship between liberty and tradition.
This course traces modern political thought through recurring disputes about sovereignty, consent, property, freedom, authority, and resistance. Beginning with Reformation-era resistance theories, it contrasts centralized sovereignty with covenantal, federal, and natural-law alternatives before examining English radicalism, Locke’s account of rights and government, and Rousseau’s transformation of liberty through the general will. Hume, Burke, and Mill frame competing approaches to convention, tradition, utility, representation, and political obligation. The course then evaluates Marxist theories of alienation, exploitation, class, and the state alongside diverse anarchist traditions grounded in mutualism, individualism, collectivism, communism, or voluntaryism. Its final movement connects tribal collectivism, war, corporatism, and totalitarian politics to the expansion of modern state power, while assessing influential arguments from Rand, Hayek, Nozick, Rothbard, and Rawls. Throughout, libertarian criticisms illuminate tensions between individual freedom, social order, and coercive authority.
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy · University College Dublin
Gerard Casey is an Irish philosopher and author known for his work in political philosophy, philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, and libertarian thought.
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