About

Political theory is the philosophical study of politics. Using methods of the humanities, especially the rigorous interpretation of classic texts in the history of political thought, political theory studies politics “normatively”, asking how the political world should or ought to work. What place should liberty, equality, justice, or virtue, e.g., have in our lives, as individuals and as political communities? Why does politics seem always to fall so frustratingly short of the hopes that we reflexively lay up in it? And what should our response to such frustrations be? The minor in Political Theory allows students especially interested in such questions to make them a focus of study.  It likewise affords consideration of the very different ways in which the brightest minds of other times and places have understood and answered them.