For those who like their philosophy with a little blood and concrete, Assistant Professor Susanna Siegel offers Moral Reasoning 66, "Moral Reasoning about Social Protest" and asks the fundamental question of political philosophy: can authority be justified?
Grounded historically in the six-day Attica prison revolt, the course will consider both classical and modern theories of disobedience and social protest from Plato's suicide to the Attica inmates' demands.
Authority will first be built up by Hobbes and brought down by Marx and then by Wolff's Defense of Anarchism.
Then, the course will begin travel through the history of civil disobedience from modern theorists back to Plato.
With a new youth movement rising, the course will ask why youth so often come together in mass protest and also inform the personal concerns of students expected to follow the conventions of adult institutions.
"It's at this moment that social protest seems compelling, even necessary for them," Siegel says.
Though the class's scope--a spry mix of classics, convicts, and the famously defiant--may discourage the sluggish, the burden falls square with most Moral Reasoning cores: two five- to-seven page papers, short response papers graded with checks and midterm and final exams.
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