This module provides an introduction to some of the major European political thinkers through a close engagement with their most celebrated works. We will read Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto. Some of these texts, it would be no exaggeration to say, have changed the world; all are considered classic works of political theory, and continue to shape our understanding of politics and society. Many of these writers' key concepts remain fundamental terms in our political vocabulary, and are consistently appealed to and evoked across the political spectrum.
We will situate each thinker and text in their specific historical context, thereby covering some of the key political sequences in modern European history, but also de-contextualise them so as to discuss and appreciate their continued relevance to and importance for European politics today in time of systemic crisis and popular revolt. Our approach to the material will therefore be filtered through a set of three key themes: power, collective self-determination and the people.