War and Peace in Modern Political Thought

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Why do wars occur? Are there fundamental differences between interstate and civil wars? What can the prevalence and persistence of war teach us about politics? Is a more peaceful world possible? If so, how might we achieve it? This course explores these and related questions through a selection of readings from the history of modern political thought. Beginning with Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and Spinoza, the course examines the origins of a secular science of war and peace in the early modern period. It then turns to the economic, geographic, military, and gender determinants of war and peace in Montesquieu, Hume, Rousseau, and Wollstonecraft before taking up the question of perpetual peace in Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx. It ends with an examination of nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism through the writings of Nietzsche, Lenin, Arendt, and Dubois along with antecedents to contemporary international relations theory in Morgenthau, Butterfield, and Herz.