| CODE | PHI5018 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Selving, Civic Virtues and Civil Society | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Philosophy | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit will explore the sources of our contemporary narratives of selfhood by looking at resources both old and new, and it shall also investigate the related role and social imaginary of civic virtue in our contemporary societies. The concept of the self has vacillated between a thin autonomous view and a thicker narrative view. These views follow the punctual, individualistic views of the self which dominated the modern age and which underpinned theoretical frameworks in both ethical and political reflection during this age - significantly the age which saw the development of civil society. The twentieth century has famously seen the return of virtue ethics. This study-unit will explore the confluence of these three spheres in the context of contemporary political thought. Study-Unit Aims: This study-unit will enable students to look closely at sources of our contemporary selving and also at the personal moral ideals and social moral imaginaries that we keep in mind as we work on ourselves within civic society. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - appraise different yet related historical views of selving; - analyze historical views of civic virtues; - assess how selving and civic virtue are interrelated; - recognize how different views of selving can enter into dialogue and arrive at an overlapping consensus on civic virtues. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - advocate for the critical importance of civic virtues within a constitutional and legal framework; - contribute intelligently towards a discussion on the need for particular civic virtues in a given society. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Dagger, R. (1997) Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Taylor, Ch. (1989) Sources of the Self, Cambridge University Press. Supplementary Readings: - Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. - Arendt, H. (1993) “ What Is Freedom?” In H. Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Books. - Atkins Kim, Self and Subjectivity, Blackwell Publishing 2005. - Blond, Ph. (2010) Red Tory: How the Left and Right have broken Britain and how we can fix it. London: Faber and Faber. - Brennan, G. and Hamlin, A. (1995) “Economizing on Virtue,” Constitutional Political Economy, 6, 35– 60. - Burtt, S. (1990) “The Good Citizen's Psyche: On the Psychology of Civic Virtue,” Polity, 23 (1), 23– 38. - Chalmers David J. (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press 2002. - Cicero. (1991) On Duties. ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - Crosby F. John, The Selfhood of the Human Person, Catholic University of America Press 2006. - Eberl T. Jason, The Nature of Human Persons, University of Notre Dame Press 2020. - Galston, W. A. (1991) Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - Hamilton, A., Madison, J., and Jay, J. (2003) The Federalist, with Letters of “Brutus,” ed. T. Ball. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress. - Laitinen Arto and Heikki Ikaheimo, Dimensions of Personhood, Imprint Academic 2007. - Langan Thomas, Human Being: A Philosophical Anthropology, University of Missouri Press 2009. - Macedo, S. (1990) Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Machiavelli, N. (1983) The Discourses, trans. L. J. Walker. New York: Penguin Books. [Google Scholar] - Montesquieu, C.-L. (1949) The Spirit of the Laws, trans. T. Nugent. New York: Hafner. - Paradiso-Michau (ed.), Reflections on the Religious, the Ethical and the Political: Calvin O. Schrag, Lexington Books 2013. - Pettit, P. (1997) Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Pocock, J. G. A. (1975) The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. - Rahe, P. A. (1992) Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. - Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. - Reimers, Adrian, The Soul of the Person, Catholic University of America Press 2006. - Rinuccini, A. (1978) “ Liberty.” In R. N. Watkins (Ed.), Humanism and Liberty: Writings on Freedom from Fifteenth-Century Florence. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. [Google Scholar] - Sallust. (1963) The Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy of Catiline, trans. S. A. Hanford. New York: Penguin Books. - Sandel, M. J. (1996) Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of Public Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. - Schrag Calvin O., The Self After Postmodernity, Yale University Press 1997. - Sidney, A. (1996) Discourses concerning Government, ed. T. G. West. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. [Google Scholar] - Sinopoli, R. C. (1987) “Liberalism, Republicanism, and the Constitution,” Polity, 19 (3), 331– 52. - Skinner, Q. (1991) “ The Paradoxes of Political Liberty.” In D. Miller (Ed.), Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Skinner, Q. (1998) Liberty before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - Tocqueville, A. de (1969) Democracy in America, trans. G. Lawrence. New York: HarperCollins. - Torchia Joseph, Exploring Personhood, Rowman and Littlefield 2007. - Trenchard, J. and Gordon, T. (1995) Cato's Letters, or, Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, ed. R. Hamowy, 2 vols. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. [Google Scholar] - Viroli, M. (2002) Republicanism, trans. A. Shugaar. New York: Hill & Wang. - Wiebe Erik P., J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, In Search of Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Personhood Eerdmans Publishing (2011). - Glasman, M. The Politics of the Common Good. Cambridge: Polity. (2022) - Pabst, A. Postliberal Politics: The Coming Era of Renewal. Cambridge: Polity.(2021) |
||||||||
| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture and Tutorial | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
|
||||||||
| LECTURER/S | Mark Sultana |
||||||||
|
The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
|||||||||