Meanings of Liberty: Applied Methods in Political Theory

Course Code: PUBLG032

Course Tutor: Emily McTernan (Department of Political Science)

Assessment: Two 3,000 word essays (40/60%)

Credit Value: 30

About this course
The course aims to set out a variety of approaches to the study of political theory, to encourage students to reflect on them and to explore some of their applications in relation to the understanding of the concept of 'liberty'.

The course (1) provides an introduction to normative, conceptual, contextual, ideological and critical metholodogies and (2) invites students to explore and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches through close study of seminal texts about liberty (Mill, Rawls, Berlin, Skinner, Marx, Foucault).

Students will be encouraged to identify the connections between substantive and methodological concerns in each text, whether they engage in normative justification, conceptual definition, historical reinterpretation, and sociological or philosophical critique of the contested concept of 'liberty'. 

This is a core module for students registered on the MA Legal and Political Theory programme and is not available as an optional module.