Politics for the People: Republicanism!
Taught by Nick Reynolds
Nick is a PhD candidate studying political theory at CUNY, with a BA and an MA in European history and Holocaust & Genocide Studies (he’s lots of fun at parties). An incorrigible nerd and bookworm, he’s interested in just about everything.
Republicanism is the radical belief that citizens can rule themselves, for the common good, without kings or lords. But how well has this ideal fared in practice? From the communal civic republicanism of the ancient Mediterranean to the revolutionary democratic republicanism of the modern world, this class will tackle some key questions of republican theory and practice: Do republics need to enforce public virtue to survive? What legitimate demands can the state make upon its citizens? How do republics negotiate the often violent tension between oligarchy and democracy?
Republicanism! will look at the heroes and villains of the republican tradition on the barricades and in the parliaments to come to a better understanding of one of the Western world's essential political traditions.
This class is the third installment in the series Politics For The People: A Guide to the -isms and -archies that Rule the World.
If men were angels, said James Madison, no governments would be necessary. But we are not angels, and from our remotest past government has been an inescapable fact of human life. Politics for the People is a crash course in the often terrible and always strange ways human beings have set out to rule themselves. This series of classes will explore monarchy, republicanism, socialism, oligarchy, anarchism, theocracy, and more as we attempt to understand human beings as political animals.
