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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Revolutionary Ideas: Utility, Justice, Equality, Freedom by Rutgers the State University of New Jersey
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About the Course
What is the purpose of government? Why should we have a State? What kind of State should we have?
Even within a political community, there may be sharp disagreements about the role and purpose of government. Some want an active, involved government, seeing legal and political institutions as the means to solve our most pressing problems, and to help bring about peace, equality, justice, happiness, and to protect individual liberty. Others want a more minimal government, motivated, perhaps, by some of the disastrous political experiments of the 20th Century, and the thought that political power is often just a step away from tyranny. In many cases, these disagreements arise out of deep philosophical disagreements.
All political and legal institutions are built on foundational ideas. In this course, we will explore those ideas, taking the political institutions and political systems around us not as fixed and unquestionable, but as things to evaluate and, if necessary, to change. We will consider the ideas and arguments of some of the world’s most celebrated philosophers, including historical thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Mary Wollstonecraft, and John Stuart Mill; and more contemporary theorists such as Elizabeth Anderson, Isaiah Berlin, Thomas Christiano, Frantz Fanon, Amy Gutmann, Friedrich Hayek, Robert Nozick, Martha Nussbaum, Julius Nyerere, Ayn Rand, John Rawls, Peter Singer, and Kok-Chor Tan.
The aim of the course is not to convince you of the correctness of any particular view or political position, but to provide you with a deeper and more philosophically-informed basis for your own views, and, perhaps, to help you better understand the views of those with whom you disagree.
Top reviews
CP
Oct 6, 2021
This course actually helped me understand the vast ideologies of various political thinkers in a brief way. Thanks to the creator who made learning fun and easy.
AE
Dec 22, 2020
I like how convenient it is for us especially that I am still a student in a university and I didn't really have to struggle managing this course.
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101 - 102 of 102 Reviews for Revolutionary Ideas: Utility, Justice, Equality, Freedom
By MARTIN S G
•Feb 24, 2023
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By Eric A P D
•Oct 4, 2020
Excelente curso, especialmente para quienes somo politólogos. Me hubiese gustado eso si que hubiesen puesto más profesores y que entregaran un certificado.