The Origin and Development of Political Psychology: From Plato to Martha Nussbaum

Undergraduate / Graduate

The course is devoted to the examination of the origin and development of political psychology, namely the application to politics of the study of the human mind. We will start with Plato's notion of the tripartite soul, devised to overcome the problems in the theory of action left open by Socrates, and to support an aristocratic arrangement of society; we will examine Aristotle's bipartite soul and its notion of weakness of the will. We will then move on to the 19th century and examine the pathbreaking work of Gustave le Bon on the psychology of crowds, which is the first attempt at studying the collective behavior of people in a situation of crowd; then Freud's application of his theory of the psyche to collective behavior, and more specifically to two established crowds -the Church and the army. Finally, we will examine some contemporary authors: Rawls' image of man as a free, rational being; Hampshire's reprise of the notion of 'parts of the soul' and his criticism of Plato; we will conclude with the role of emotions in Martha Nussbaum's thought. The first two classes will be devoted to a clarification of the notion of 'political philosophy' and to an account of the methodology in the history of political thought.