POL 396 - Seminar in Political Philosophy

FDR: SS2
Credits: 3 in fall and winter, 4 in spring
Planned Offering: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.

Topic for Fall 2012:

Politics 396: Seminar in Political Philosophy: Getting Jobs (3). How does the presumption of leadership fit with our democratic sensibilities, institutions, and the requirements of self-government? What of the call to leadership in the age of technological mastery and control, haunted as we are by the specter of totalitarianism, of centuries past and of our present technological “efficiency” and “work?” If leadership ought to be more than a “tool” or “method” among the various styles of “self-improvement” and “management,” whence its spirit or soul? Would the gaze “East” suggest that the “West” has no more “resources” of its own with which to fund a moral vision and purpose? The story of one innovative leader and one revolutionary of modern self-consciousness provide the matter of inquiry. We study Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs alongside Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and wonder what Jobs’ Apple, Pixar, various innovations, and Eastern spirituality have to do with Nietzsche’s political and spiritual prescriptions after the “Death of God.” Velásquez .