Philosophical Anthropology: God and the Political Order

What role does God play in the political order? This course will reflect on the “place” of God in the nature and destiny of man and human existence, and therefore in the organization of that existence in community. We will focus above all on the fundamental difference between the ancients and the moderns in the conception of the nature of politics and political authority, and see how Christianity transforms the horizon of politics, introducing a new complexity to the problem. Although the approach we will take in the course will be principally philosophical, we will read some classic historical studies of political community in the ancient and medieval worlds, in addition to more thematic studies that set into relief the principles governing the question. Some of those authors include philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, de Koninck, and Maritain, as well as the historians de Coulanges and Kantorowicz.