Admission requirements
Participation in the seminar is only permitted if the propaedeutic phase has been passed (60 EC).
Description
Politics is often understood as a struggle for power. When studying political phenomena, we implicitly or explicitly rely on certain assumptions about what power is and how it operates. Robert Dahl, for instance, defines political power as the capacity of one actor to pursue their interests at the expense of others. Steven Lukes argues, however, that attempts to render power empirically measurable risk overlooking crucial dimensions of power. Ideology, for example, shapes what actors understand as their own “interests” in the first place, yet it cannot easily be captured by empirical analysis. This course therefore draws on the philosophical tradition to explore the multiple dimensions of political power.
Philosophers have traditionally emphasized the normative dimension of political power, focusing on how to distinguish legitimate power from the violence into which it collapses once legitimacy is lost. Questions of power are inseparable from questions of political legitimacy. Genealogical analyses by thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault challenge the assumption that stable criteria of legitimacy can be identified. They show that power operates differently across historical contexts and continually re-legitimizes itself on new grounds. If our understanding of legitimacy is historically contingent, this raises the question of whether political power can ever be truly legitimate. Exploring this complex relationship between power, normativity, and legitimacy lies at the core of this course.
Course objectives
- To develop the ability to critically evaluate and compare different philosophical perspectives on political power.
- To gain insight into the complexity of the relationship between power, legitimacy, and normativity.
Method of Instruction
Assessment Method
Reading List
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Timetable
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