POLS 351 Tocqueville, Mill, and Nietzsche on Individuality and Community in a Modern Democracy

Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Nietzsche are three of the most influential theorists to grapple with the tradition of liberal political thought. The first two are friendly critics who seek to fortify liberalism against what they see as its latent pathologies, while Nietzsche is a not-so-friendly critic who wants to overturn it entirely. Given that liberalism is under attack today from both the right and the left, there is much to gain from serious study of their reflections. In this course, we will compare the strengths and weaknesses of their diagnoses of the present and visions for the future. Guiding questions for the course will include the following: Does liberal democracy uplift human beings, or degrade them? How should the competing demands of individual independence and community solidarity be balanced? How can we best counter modern society’s tendency to engender stifling conformity? What is the significance of Christianity for the cultural heritage of Western society? What role, if any, should religion play in societies of the future? Finally, what does human flourishing consist of, and what kind of sociopolitical conditions best facilitate it? The culminating assignment of for the course will be a substantial research paper on one or more of these thinkers.

Sub-field: POLITICAL THEORY