Course Description

01 (B. Hutchens) We will be examining the place of law, legality, and legislation within certain coordinates of conceptual space: on one axis, we are concerned with the nature of law at the confluence of ethical and political theory; and on the other, we will examine the interplay between the individual (in respect of its potential for self-legislation) and society (in its need for a law-bound order).

Required reading will include selections from:
Plato, Apology, Crito, Gorgias, Euthydemus, Republic and Laws
Aristotle, De Anima, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics
Cicero, Republic, On Laws, and On Duties
Augustine, City of God
Aquinas, Treatise on Law (from Summa Theologiae)
Hobbes, Leviathan
Locke, Second Treatise of Government
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, The Metaphysics of Morals