Having never taken an online course myself, yet having considered creating and offering one for my students, the open University courses were a real boon to someone who had originally considered them to be only an emergency substitution for the last-minute cancellation of a Belgian university course.
The approved modification to my sabbatical leave agreement stipulated that I needed 40 hours of Open University courses. There were a lot of fascinating choices. I was tempted to follow further some of the subjects that had been central to my studies in Brussels - questions of culture and national identity. These are central issues to comparative politics and frankly they are my favorite subject, but at the Université Libre I had plenty of that. I decided to suck it up and do my least favorite subject: political philosophy.
With DVC's new AA degree in political science, we created a new course in political theory (Pol Sci 240). For the last several years we have offered that course just one section per year because, for most people, political theory is a lot like going to the dentist - something you do only if you have to. Something almost no one does because they want to. It was the same for me, both as a graduate student, where I took as little of the subject as possible and as an instructor, where if I could avoid teaching it, I did.
With only one section a year it was pretty easy to avoid. Over time demand for our major has grown and with it, demand for Pol Sci 240. We now expect to offer it every semester, perhaps multiple sections, not far in the future. I knew this. That's why I wrote preparing a syllabus for PS 240 into my sabbatical application. And though I knew I could do it, I still did not feel particularly comfortable with the subject.
The Open University courses were a significant help with the task of developing my Political Theory course. The courses I chose provided both a great foundation for understanding the subject as well as insight into what had always been my biggest problem with the subject matter: how do you deal with subjects about which there is the potential for endless debate? The courses I chose were
Negative freedom is freedom from interference. It asks the question: how many doors are open? Whether I walk through those doors or not does not matter. It is about the opportunity to do so that is important. Only restrictions imposed by others limit my freedom. Restrictions I impose on myself or imposed by nature are not included in this class.
Positive freedom is the other class. It believes that being your own master is the only way to be truly free. It is the freedom to “be all that you can be”. This freedom may only come if some of your choices are constrained. For example, compulsory education enhances positive freedom yet it is compulsory and hence a restriction on negative freedom. So, China’s constraints on freedom to facilitate the ‘harmony’ that makes life better is a good thing? Is positive freedom just a fig leaf for authoritarian regimes?
On the question of blending ideology and philosophy… This unit is a great example of the potential** for using philosophical concepts to illuminate the nature of an ideology. An ideology has recognizable form, to its adherents it is a positive force. If an idea is also positive (say, liberty as an example) then it must be massaged into the shape demanded by the ideology. Seeing how people do this, whether consciously or unconsciously but examining the end product (the shape of their ideas) sheds light on both the ideas (philosophies) and on the systems (ideologies) It is a two-fer. Students get the philosophical and the practical.
**unrealized potential in this course, because that is not their goal. But I think it would be quite useful to students. Philosophy is nice but ideology moves politics
The final course I took seemed to be an excellent extrapolation of the ideas introduced in the philosophy courses. The course was ‘Rights and Justice in International Relations’. It raised some fascinating and important questions: Are rights universal? And how is state sovereignty reconciled with universality?
On universality: There is, of course, a religious basis for some claims to universality. This is the basis for the American view expressed so eloquently in our Declaration of Independence: “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. If God created us all and God has endowed us all with rights, then those rights must be universal. Is there a secular claim to universality? The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) creates such a claim. The fact is, that sovereign states have (almost but not quite universally) signed on to this charter. That and subsequent reinforcements (Helsinki Accords, etc.) have established a global consensus. World public opinion recognized universal human rights.
But…. Having a right as a philosophical matter and enjoying that right in practice is not always the same thing. This is where you bump up against the problem of state sovereignty, also recognized in the UN Charter. What happens when a sovereign state appears to be violating a universal right? That is one of the great questions of international politics and Law. The Open University unit does a good job of exploring that issue, though for me the real value was in seeing how they explored the problem of taking a philosophical notion (rights, or justice) from one setting (domestic politics in a western, liberal society) and transferring it to another (the international system). That model is exactly the one I intend to use in my PS 240 course.
I intend to introduce the students to several competing ideologies (Socialism, Liberalism, Fascism etc.) and then a number of philosophical issues (liberty, equality legitimacy etc.) and examine those issues from the perspective of the different ideologies. I think this will be an interesting and challenging approach for our students and I am excited at the prospect of teaching it. The Open University materials were instrumental in providing the inspiration and mechanics for this approach. It was very useful and valuable.
The approved modification to my sabbatical leave agreement stipulated that I needed 40 hours of Open University courses. There were a lot of fascinating choices. I was tempted to follow further some of the subjects that had been central to my studies in Brussels - questions of culture and national identity. These are central issues to comparative politics and frankly they are my favorite subject, but at the Université Libre I had plenty of that. I decided to suck it up and do my least favorite subject: political philosophy.
With DVC's new AA degree in political science, we created a new course in political theory (Pol Sci 240). For the last several years we have offered that course just one section per year because, for most people, political theory is a lot like going to the dentist - something you do only if you have to. Something almost no one does because they want to. It was the same for me, both as a graduate student, where I took as little of the subject as possible and as an instructor, where if I could avoid teaching it, I did.
With only one section a year it was pretty easy to avoid. Over time demand for our major has grown and with it, demand for Pol Sci 240. We now expect to offer it every semester, perhaps multiple sections, not far in the future. I knew this. That's why I wrote preparing a syllabus for PS 240 into my sabbatical application. And though I knew I could do it, I still did not feel particularly comfortable with the subject.
The Open University courses were a significant help with the task of developing my Political Theory course. The courses I chose provided both a great foundation for understanding the subject as well as insight into what had always been my biggest problem with the subject matter: how do you deal with subjects about which there is the potential for endless debate? The courses I chose were
1) Introducing Philosophy
2) Two Concepts of Freedom
3) Rights and Justice in international relations.
Introducing philosophy
I suppose the first issue to deal with is the relationship between Political Theory (the subject of our 240 course) and Political Philosophy. Political Philosophy is practically a subset of Political Theory. Theory is a very broad subject. Potentially you could develop theory in any of perhaps a dozen subfields of political science and all of them would be suitable subject matter for the 240 course. What that means for an introductory course at a community college is that you need to create a more limited focus and then develop that. For us, that focus is political philosophy. Even there, though, you immediately confront the dilemma of too many possibilities. There's no way you can do it all. You have to make choices.
I suppose the first issue to deal with is the relationship between Political Theory (the subject of our 240 course) and Political Philosophy. Political Philosophy is practically a subset of Political Theory. Theory is a very broad subject. Potentially you could develop theory in any of perhaps a dozen subfields of political science and all of them would be suitable subject matter for the 240 course. What that means for an introductory course at a community college is that you need to create a more limited focus and then develop that. For us, that focus is political philosophy. Even there, though, you immediately confront the dilemma of too many possibilities. There's no way you can do it all. You have to make choices.
It was very helpful to me to see how the Open University faculty dealt with this problem. Do you try to do a little of everything? They did not. What they did was present a methodology for thinking about philosophical questions, the universe of which is near limitless. They established some basic issues that should be considered, regardless of the specific subject:
1) considering the relevance to “real life”.
2) The importance of conceptual, definition
3) Reason versus Opinion. Testing beliefs with rational argument.
This was very helpful to me. It gives me a handle on what has always been my biggest problem with political philosophy: how do you create a discrete curriculum from a boundless subject matter? The nature of philosophy is extremely subjective, but as an instructor you have the responsibility to test and evaluate students in a manner that is as objective as possible. I found the criteria used in the Open University courses to be quite helpful in solving that problem.
Seeing how they had presented the question of studying philosophy and then reduced the larger, broader and unmanageable questions down to distinct and specific questions around the example of ‘Two Concepts of Freedom’ validated the approach I have been leaning towards since undertaking to prepare a course to offer as my own Pol Sci 240.
My primary interest and expertise is in the field of comparative politics. It colors how I look at questions of political philosophy and theory. Naturally, it will find its way into my course. I intend to use ideology as a framework and lens through which to examine several key concepts of political philosophy. The second Open University course I took, (A211–2:Two Concepts of Freedom) built upon the foundation established in A211– 1: Introducing Philosophy. It examined in depth Isaiah Berlin writings on ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. Those two concepts draw the distinction between negative freedom and positive freedom:
Seeing how they had presented the question of studying philosophy and then reduced the larger, broader and unmanageable questions down to distinct and specific questions around the example of ‘Two Concepts of Freedom’ validated the approach I have been leaning towards since undertaking to prepare a course to offer as my own Pol Sci 240.
My primary interest and expertise is in the field of comparative politics. It colors how I look at questions of political philosophy and theory. Naturally, it will find its way into my course. I intend to use ideology as a framework and lens through which to examine several key concepts of political philosophy. The second Open University course I took, (A211–2:Two Concepts of Freedom) built upon the foundation established in A211– 1: Introducing Philosophy. It examined in depth Isaiah Berlin writings on ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. Those two concepts draw the distinction between negative freedom and positive freedom:
Positive freedom is the other class. It believes that being your own master is the only way to be truly free. It is the freedom to “be all that you can be”. This freedom may only come if some of your choices are constrained. For example, compulsory education enhances positive freedom yet it is compulsory and hence a restriction on negative freedom. So, China’s constraints on freedom to facilitate the ‘harmony’ that makes life better is a good thing? Is positive freedom just a fig leaf for authoritarian regimes?
On the question of blending ideology and philosophy… This unit is a great example of the potential** for using philosophical concepts to illuminate the nature of an ideology. An ideology has recognizable form, to its adherents it is a positive force. If an idea is also positive (say, liberty as an example) then it must be massaged into the shape demanded by the ideology. Seeing how people do this, whether consciously or unconsciously but examining the end product (the shape of their ideas) sheds light on both the ideas (philosophies) and on the systems (ideologies) It is a two-fer. Students get the philosophical and the practical.
**unrealized potential in this course, because that is not their goal. But I think it would be quite useful to students. Philosophy is nice but ideology moves politics
The final course I took seemed to be an excellent extrapolation of the ideas introduced in the philosophy courses. The course was ‘Rights and Justice in International Relations’. It raised some fascinating and important questions: Are rights universal? And how is state sovereignty reconciled with universality?
On universality: There is, of course, a religious basis for some claims to universality. This is the basis for the American view expressed so eloquently in our Declaration of Independence: “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. If God created us all and God has endowed us all with rights, then those rights must be universal. Is there a secular claim to universality? The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) creates such a claim. The fact is, that sovereign states have (almost but not quite universally) signed on to this charter. That and subsequent reinforcements (Helsinki Accords, etc.) have established a global consensus. World public opinion recognized universal human rights.
But…. Having a right as a philosophical matter and enjoying that right in practice is not always the same thing. This is where you bump up against the problem of state sovereignty, also recognized in the UN Charter. What happens when a sovereign state appears to be violating a universal right? That is one of the great questions of international politics and Law. The Open University unit does a good job of exploring that issue, though for me the real value was in seeing how they explored the problem of taking a philosophical notion (rights, or justice) from one setting (domestic politics in a western, liberal society) and transferring it to another (the international system). That model is exactly the one I intend to use in my PS 240 course.
I intend to introduce the students to several competing ideologies (Socialism, Liberalism, Fascism etc.) and then a number of philosophical issues (liberty, equality legitimacy etc.) and examine those issues from the perspective of the different ideologies. I think this will be an interesting and challenging approach for our students and I am excited at the prospect of teaching it. The Open University materials were instrumental in providing the inspiration and mechanics for this approach. It was very useful and valuable.
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