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Instructor: Alex Worsnip. This course meets TR 5:00 – 6:15 p.m. in CW 103.

This course is two things at once: an introduction to some classic works of philosophy on one hand, and an introduction to the art of reading, understanding and philosophically engaging with historical works of philosophy on the other. We will focus particularly on classic works of social and political philosophy, but it will be an aim of our course to set these ideas in the context of the systematic philosophical doctrines about knowledge, reality, thought and language, out of which they grew. Readings will include works by (among others) Plato, Hobbes, John Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Mill, Marx, and Alain Locke.