David Peritz

Many of us are struck by the growing irrationality of contemporary democratic politics to the point where we despair of our capacity to address problems like global climate change or pandemics that could pose existential threats to our species, to fashion constructive foreign policy as wars rage, or to face a whole range of urgent but more mundane policy issues. In this class, we will seek to understand disturbing trends like populism, polarization, disinformation, and self-injuring or -defeating politics, as well as the resurfacing of nativism, xenophobia, and racism in contemporary politics—in part on their own terms but also by asking whether they are deeply rooted in human nature, at least on our current best understandings of ourselves. More specifically, democracy seems to rely on at least a minimum degree of rationality, learning, openness to argument and difference, and self-control on the part of the citizens whose votes and opinions guide government policy. But is this reliance foolhardy in light of what recent history, psychology, evolutionary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science teach? Do aspects of our current social and technological circumstances make us less able to manifest these qualities of character today than our Enlightenment progenitors hoped in the era of democratic revolutions—the era from which many of the ideas and institutions that continue to inform our politics today emerged? In this course, we will survey aspects of the political history of recent centuries, as well as our own historical moment, to ask if they should temper confidence in the power of reason in politics. We will also examine recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy that conclude that it is hard to sustain a model of human behavior that places reason and rationality in the driver’s seat. What alternative accounts of human nature are emerging from recent research? And what are their political implications, especially for democratic societies? By bringing together political science, history, and theory with cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy, we should be able to occupy the intersection of distinct but equally relevant disciplines to ask whether the Enlightenment’s faith in democracy was misplaced. Or, instead, are there reasons to believe that democracy can maintain its claim to legitimacy, even after reason has been demoted in our understandings of human nature? To address this final question, we will also examine proposals for 21st-century democratic reforms that either seek to adjust downward the expectations on the capacity of citizens to engage in deliberative politics or to refashion political institutions to better summon the better angels of our nature.

For the first time in history, it is not only conceivable but likely that human action will result in the extinction of our species. We transformed our planet from remarkably resilient to deeply vulnerable in a flash, whether time is measured geologically or in terms of cultural evolution. So, we struggle to determine how to cope and what to do about our newly vulnerable world. We face, especially in climate change, an impending global catastrophe beyond the ethical imaginations of all but the most recent generations. Many of the very same forces (especially capitalism and the energy-intensive technology and civilization it spreads on a global scale) that produce planetary peril tend—either directly and intentionally or simply by their further effects—to make it difficult to become more intentional about planetary stewardship at the pace and on the scale required. But just as human activity rendered our world vulnerable, only concerted human action can save it. This means that climate change and other crises of the Anthropocene can only be tamed politically; i.e., through collective action on a global scale of a kind without precedent in human history. Global political action, in turn, requires not-yet-developed ethical resources and political capacities if it is to succeed in saving our planet in ways that avoid unjust and inhumane distributions of costs and suffering. Developing the normative and imaginative resources to grasp the enormity of the advancing climate and environmental crises is an essential first step in creating the capacity for collective action required to respond. While traditional concerns with topics like distributive justice offer partial guidance as we notice, for instance, the overlap between environmental and racial injustice domestically as well as globally, many of the normative issues raised by our rapidly advancing, world-altering powers are simply unprecedented. To develop the normative resources required to navigate this new world, we need simultaneously to seek new orienting ideas while also examining Western, non-Western/indigenous, and contemporary conceptions of social justice, responsibility, relatedness, and ethics anew. Which, if any, can be adapted to incorporate global, intergenerational, and interspecies obligations? Do revisions in received understandings of risk and agency necessitate corollary changes in ideas like democracy, power, responsibility, privacy, and our relation to the natural and built worlds? To address these issues, this course divides into three main units, in turn: 1) We will examine the novel forces at work in the Anthropocene and the unprecedented questions of justice and ethics that they raise (e.g., Is it morally permissible to have a child in a world that may become rapidly uninhabitable? Should we engage in ubiquitous surveillance as the capacity for, perhaps, inadvertent mass destruction becomes more readily available to ordinary persons?). 2) We will also examine the tradition of Western philosophy to survey the resources it contains or lacks for answering these kinds of novel questions. 3) In light of the limited resources that this tradition contains, we will turn to other sources—briefly surveying recent work on non-Western traditions (especially indigenous cultures) and concentrating on contemporary political philosophy and ethics. Students should emerge with a sharper understanding of the political and ethical dimensions of the climate crisis and other environmental issues and the normative resources available to them in determining how to respond personally and politically. This course will fully participate in the spring 2025 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster.

Many of us are struck by the growing irrationality of contemporary democratic politics to the point where we despair of our capacity to address problems like global climate change or pandemics that could pose existential threats to our species, to fashion constructive foreign policy as wars rage, or to face a whole range of urgent but more mundane policy issues. In this class, we will seek to understand disturbing trends like populism, polarization, disinformation, and self-injuring or -defeating politics, as well as the resurfacing of nativism, xenophobia, and racism in contemporary politics—in part on their own terms but also by asking whether they are deeply rooted in human nature, at least on our current best understandings of ourselves. More specifically, democracy seems to rely on at least a minimum degree of rationality, learning, openness to argument and difference, and self-control on the part of the citizens whose votes and opinions guide government policy. But is this reliance foolhardy in light of what recent history, psychology, evolutionary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science teach? Do aspects of our current social and technological circumstances make us less able to manifest these qualities of character today than our Enlightenment progenitors hoped in the era of democratic revolutions—the era from which many of the ideas and institutions that continue to inform our politics today emerged? In this course, we will survey aspects of the political history of recent centuries, as well as our own historical moment, to ask if they should temper confidence in the power of reason in politics. We will also examine recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy that conclude that it is hard to sustain a model of human behavior that places reason and rationality in the driver’s seat. What alternative accounts of human nature are emerging from recent research? And what are their political implications, especially for democratic societies? By bringing together political science, history, and theory with cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy, we should be able to occupy the intersection of distinct but equally relevant disciplines to ask whether the Enlightenment’s faith in democracy was misplaced. Or, instead, are there reasons to believe that democracy can maintain its claim to legitimacy, even after reason has been demoted in our understandings of human nature? To address this final question, we will also examine proposals for 21st-century democratic reforms that either seek to adjust downward the expectations on the capacity of citizens to engage in deliberative politics or to refashion political institutions to better summon the better angels of our nature.

For the first time in history, it is not only conceivable but likely that human action will result in the extinction of our species. We transformed our planet from remarkably resilient to deeply vulnerable in a flash, whether time is measured geologically or in terms of cultural evolution. So, we struggle to determine how to cope and what to do about our newly vulnerable world. We face, especially in climate change, an impending global catastrophe beyond the ethical imaginations of all but the most recent generations. Many of the very same forces (especially capitalism and the energy-intensive technology and civilization it spreads on a global scale) that produce planetary peril tend—either directly and intentionally or simply by their further effects—to make it difficult to become more intentional about planetary stewardship at the pace and on the scale required. But just as human activity rendered our world vulnerable, only concerted human action can save it. This means that climate change and other crises of the Anthropocene can only be tamed politically; i.e., through collective action on a global scale of a kind without precedent in human history. Global political action, in turn, requires not-yet-developed ethical resources and political capacities if it is to succeed in saving our planet in ways that avoid unjust and inhumane distributions of costs and suffering. Developing the normative and imaginative resources to grasp the enormity of the advancing climate and environmental crises is an essential first step in creating the capacity for collective action required to respond. While traditional concerns with topics like distributive justice offer partial guidance as we notice, for instance, the overlap between environmental and racial injustice domestically as well as globally, many of the normative issues raised by our rapidly advancing, world-altering powers are simply unprecedented. To develop the normative resources required to navigate this new world, we need simultaneously to seek new orienting ideas while also examining Western, non-Western/indigenous, and contemporary conceptions of social justice, responsibility, relatedness, and ethics anew. Which, if any, can be adapted to incorporate global, intergenerational, and interspecies obligations? Do revisions in received understandings of risk and agency necessitate corollary changes in ideas like democracy, power, responsibility, privacy, and our relation to the natural and built worlds? To address these issues, this course divides into three main units, in turn: 1) We will examine the novel forces at work in the Anthropocene and the unprecedented questions of justice and ethics that they raise (e.g., Is it morally permissible to have a child in a world that may become rapidly uninhabitable? Should we engage in ubiquitous surveillance as the capacity for, perhaps, inadvertent mass destruction becomes more readily available to ordinary persons?). 2) We will also examine the tradition of Western philosophy to survey the resources it contains or lacks for answering these kinds of novel questions. 3) In light of the limited resources that this tradition contains, we will turn to other sources—briefly surveying recent work on non-Western traditions (especially indigenous cultures) and concentrating on contemporary political philosophy and ethics. Students should emerge with a sharper understanding of the political and ethical dimensions of the climate crisis and other environmental issues and the normative resources available to them in determining how to respond personally and politically. This course will fully participate in the spring 2025 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster.

The 21st-century political economy is often blamed for backsliding and outright decay in many of the world’s democratic societies. An increasingly global, financialized, deregulated, information-intensive, and automated economy tends to produce high levels of inequality in wealth and income, accompanied by growing resentment at the unfairness of the distribution of resources. This resentment, in turn, feeds populist politics, often with an authoritarian drift and a nativist tendency to scapegoat immigrants, minorities, and/or (liberal) elites for the growing precariousness experienced by many. At the same time, unresponsive political institutions that seem powerless to regulate economic forces produce growing disenchantment with traditional democracy and mainstream political parties, reinforcing democratic decay. This diagnosis begs the question: What does 21st-century democracy require of its political economy? Posing the question from this perspective directs attention to the reasons that many democratic theorists have viewed democratic capitalism as dilemmatic rather than oxymoronic. They have simultaneously embraced two ideas. First, a capitalist economy—in which investment decisions remain largely at the control of private owners of capital and others’ need to sell their labor to firms organized to produce profit while goods and jobs are distributed by markets and regulated by pricing mechanism—has so far proved an essential prerequisite to the successful institutionalization of modern, constitutional, representative democracy (due, for instance, to the way in which it diffuses social power, supports the emergence of a sizable middle class, democratizes via commodifying culture, and incentivizes constructive cultivation of individual capacity and social innovation). But second, this kind of economy also unleashes powerful social forces that predictably distort or undermine fuller democratization; for instance, by generating levels of social inequality incompatible with the normative requirements of equal citizenship and, more generally, by allowing one of the main social systems via which society is reproduced to operate autonomously and, therefore, often in tension with the distinct logic of democratically formed opinion and will. In this course, we will examine these issues by attempting to identify: (1) the most defensible conceptions of democracy for the 21st century, (2) the most important and politically relevant trends of the contemporary economic epoch, and (3) whether recent economic developments are contributing to contemporary democratic decay. We will then (4) ask whether capitalism’s antidemocratic drives have ever been successfully tamed in the past and (5) seek to evaluate the prospects of some current proposal for taming capitalism’s antidemocratic impulses.

How can social order be explained in modern societies that are too large, fluid, and complex to rely on tradition or self-conscious political regulation alone? Social theory is a distinctly modern tradition of discourse centered on answering this question and focused on a series of theorists and texts whose works gave rise to the modern social sciences, overlap with some of the most influential modern philosophy, and provide powerful tools for critical understanding of contemporary social life. The theorists whose works form the backbone of this course explore the sources of social order in structures, many of which work “behind the backs” of the awareness and intentions of those whose interaction they integrate and regulate. The market economy, the legal and administrative state, the firm and the professions, highly differentiated political and civil cultures, racial and gender order, a variety of disciplinary techniques inscribed in diverse mundane practices—one by one, these theorists labored to unmask the often hidden sources of social order in the modern world. Moreover, this understanding of social order has evolved side-by-side with evaluations that run the gambit from those that view Western modernity as achieving the apex of human freedom and individuality to those that see it as insinuating a uniquely thorough and invidious system of domination. This class will introduce many of the foundational texts and authors in social theory, the social sciences, and social philosophy, including Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. In this way, it will also cover various schools of social explanation, including: Marxism, structuralism, poststructuralism, and (in group conferences) critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and feminism. The thread connecting these disparate authors and approaches will be the issue of the worth or legitimacy of Western modernity, the historical process that produced capitalism, representative democracy, religious pluralism, the modern sciences, ethical individualism, secularism, fascism, communism, new forms of racism and sexism, and many “new social movements.” Which of the institutions and practices that structured the process of modernization are worth defending or reforming? Which should be rejected outright? Or should we reject them all and embrace a new, postmodern social epoch? In addressing these questions, we will grapple both with classical texts and with the contemporary implications of different approaches to social analysis.

While important trends in contemporary culture and politics seem to promise not only “the death of philosophy” but also the arrival of a “post-truth epoch,” the oldest discipline itself seems not to have gotten the memo. Instead, the last 50 years witnessed a blossoming of original, important, exciting, and genuinely new work in systematic philosophy. Spanning different traditions (analytic and continental) and locations (Anglo-American, German, French, Italian, postcolonial, etc.), the reemergence of systematic philosophy revisits many of the most important questions that occupied the grand tradition for much of the last 2,500 years. What matters in life? What do we owe to each other? What do we mean by the truth? In what does human agency consist? Does human morality stem primarily from reason or emotion —or their combined operation? What is the nature of justice? Is it always wrong to lie? Can all aspects of human experience be accounted for in terms of biological processes, or do some escape reductive scientific explanation? At the same time, new issues of race, gender, identity, and, ultimately, the claim to universal knowledge and authority made on behalf of philosophy itself have been added to the range of traditional issues addressed by contemporary philosophers. This course is for anyone interested in coming up to speed with important developments in recent philosophy and will focus on the big ideas from some of the most important recent thinkers. In it, we will not only survey some of the most important and challenging works in contemporary philosophy but also put these thinkers in dialogue with each other, testing the insights that they generate and also the blind spots that they produce by comparing them with one another. The first half of this yearlong course considers several of the most important critical philosophers of the last third of the 20th century, while the second half concentrates on thinkers whose works and ideas gained prominence primarily in the first decades of 21st-century philosophy.

While important trends in contemporary culture and politics seem to promise not only "the death of philosophy" but also the arrival of a "post-truth epoch," the oldest discipline itself seems not to have gotten the memo. Instead, the last 50 years witnessed a blossoming of original, important, exciting, and genuinely new work in systematic philosophy. Spanning different traditions (analytic and continental) and locations (Anglo-American, German, French, Italian, postcolonial, etc.), the reemergence of systematic philosophy revisits many of the most important questions that occupied the grand tradition for much of the last 2,500 years: What matters in life? What do we owe to each other? What do we mean by the truth? In what does human agency consist? Does human morality stem primarily from reason or emotion or from their combined operation? What is the nature of justice? Is it always wrong to lie? Can all aspects of human experience be accounted for in terms of biological processes, or do some escape reductive scientific explanation? At the same time, new issues of race, gender, identity, and, ultimately, the claim to universal knowledge and authority made on behalf of philosophy itself have been added to the range of traditional issues addressed by contemporary philosophers. This course is for any student interested in coming up to speed with important developments in recent philosophy and will focus on the big ideas from some of the most important recent thinkers. We will not only survey some of the most important and challenging works in contemporary philosophy but also put these thinkers in dialogue with each other, testing the insights they generate and also, by comparing them with one another, the blind spots they produce.

Over the last 50 years, the reputation of the political system that we refer to as (modern representative) democracy has been on a roller-coaster ride from immense popularity to internal revolt and decay. One way to understand this deep ambivalence about “the worst form of government (except for all the others)” is that the values it enshrines—freedom, equality, autonomy, reciprocity, popular sovereignty, the rule of law, deliberation, tolerance—retain an unrivaled appeal; but the practice of democracy so seldom resembles those values that its failures generate anger, resentment, and an appetite for an alternative or, barring that, an urge to punish those who give lip service to those values while governing in ways that look, in turn, inept and self-serving. In this class, we will develop this understanding by exploring: (1) the normative foundations of modern democratic theory in 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century philosophical texts that inspired the revolutions and institutions that continue to structure the political life of many today; (2) the multifaceted failures of the institutions, politics, and policies of self-proclaimed democracy in the 21st century (with a special, though not exclusive, focus on the United States and the discipline of political science); and (3) proposals for repairing 21st-century democracy so that it more fully realizes its potential. In the process, we will also examine some of the 21st-century social forces that challenge earlier formulations of democratic theory and practice, including new attention paid to long-buried axes of difference and domination like gender, race, class and sexual orientation, the transformation of the public sphere and communication by new media and technology, and the globalization of the economy and the new kinds of power and inequality that this has generated. This yearlong first-year studies class is designed to be accessible to all levels of students and to introduce them to college-level work, including sustained independent research (conference work) and participation in focused classroom dialogue in seminar. In addition to regular conference meetings, we will meet individually every other week for conference to discuss independent research projects and in a group conference every other week to discuss various aspects of adjusting to college work and life. No prior experience is required, but a willingness to tackle long reading assignments with care and to work together to unpack texts dense in argument and analysis certainly is.

Political philosophy consists of: a discourse of thinking about the nature of political power; the conditions for its just and unjust use; the rights of individuals, minorities and majorities; and the nature and bounds of political community. Rather than tackling pressing political problems one at a time, political theorists seek systematic solutions in overall visions of just societies or comprehensive diagnoses of the roots of oppression and domination in political orders. In this course, we focus on modern writers who shaped the terms and concepts that increasingly populate political imaginations the world over; that is, the conscious and unconscious ideas about rights, power, class, democracy, community, and the like that we use to make sense of our political lives. In this semester-long introduction to this field, we will concentrate on the long social-contract tradition that stretches from Hobbes and Locke to Rousseau and Kant and its critics, especially Hume and Hegel. By studying these thinkers, we will be better positioned to answer something like the following range of questions. What is the nature of political power? What is the content of social justice? Does democracy threaten basic individual rights? Is it more important to respect the individual or the community when the interests of the two conflict? What aspects of human potential and social worlds do different grand theories of political life illuminate and occlude? In answering these questions, we will be forced to test both the internal coherence and the continuing relevance of the political visions that shape modern politics.

What does it mean to age with dignity? What is required, both individually and socially, to fairly and with dignity provide the special care that the elderly often require? Special urgency attends these questions today, as we are in the midst of a lifespan revolution with many people living more than twice as long as the average person did just a few generations earlier. This urgency is compounded by the fact that the organization and distribution of care labor does not yet adequately reflect this lifespan revolution or the transition to highly mobile and less traditional societies characterized by rapid social and technological changes—changes that can make aging harder and care more difficult to provide. Societies in which an ever-larger portion of their populations have entered elderhood face issues to do with justice in the distribution of care, the nature and forms of ageism, or the isolation of those deemed elderly from the rest of society. Meanwhile, the organization and distribution of care labor remains deeply structured by traditional assumptions, as well as inequalities and prejudices that occupy the intersections of age, gender, and race. Viewed simultaneously from these angles, the lifespan revolution presents new and pressing ethical issues about how best to lead a complete and extended human life. The lifespan revolution also presents issues of justice about how society can productively incorporate—while also respecting and caring for those living far longer than humans have in the past—and fairly distribute “Love’s Labor” of caring. These will be among the most urgent issues of ethics and justice in the middle of the 21st century. This course will examine these issues, in part, by drawing on a variety of academic fields, including philosophy, political theory, psychology, cognitive science, labor studies, and literature. This is also a community-based course; we will partner with Wartburg, a diverse adult care community in Mount Vernon, NY, close to the College. In the first half of the course, students will study the range of issues described above and begin to develop a more specific focus on how lifelong learning contributes to well-being in elderhood. This focus serves as preparation to offer “cognitive care” to the elderly members of the Wartburg community and will be accompanied by visits to Wartburg so that students can get a sense of its members and their interests and have an opportunity to observe lifelong learning in practice. Students will also develop short classes or workshops to offer at Wartburg as the main focus of their conference work. In the second half of the course, the study of specific issues of justice and care presented by the lifespan revolution will continue but also be supplemented by engagement at Wartburg, as students offer the courses or workshops that they have developed to the residents there.

Political theory consists in a discourse of thinking about the nature of political power; the conditions for its just and unjust use; the rights of individuals, minorities and majorities; and the nature and bounds of political community. Rather than tackling pressing political problems one at a time, political theorists seek systematic solutions in overall visions of just societies or comprehensive diagnoses of the roots of oppression and domination in political orders. This course will focus on modern writers who shaped the terms and concepts that increasingly populate political imaginations the world over; that is, the conscious and unconscious ideas about rights, power, class, democracy, community, and the like that we use to make sense of our political lives. Thinkers to be considered will include: in fall, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant—the long social-contract tradition; in spring, Hegel, Marx, Mill, and Nietzsche—the long tradition in critical theory. By studying these thinkers, we will be better positioned to answer the following questions: What is the nature of political power? What is the content of social justice? Does democracy threaten basic individual rights? Is it more important to respect the individual or the community when the interests of the two conflict? Is a market economy required by, or incompatible with, democracy? What aspects of human potential and social worlds do different grand theories of political life illuminate and occlude? Finally, this course will also pose the issue of the worth and legitimacy of European modernity; that is, the historical process that produced capitalism, representative democracy, religious pluralism, the modern sciences, ethical individualism, secularism, fascism, communism, new forms of racism and sexism, and many “new social movements.” Which of the ideas that jostle for prominence within this tradition are worth defending? Which should be rejected? Or should we reject them all and instead embrace a new, postmodern political epoch? In answering these questions, we will be forced to test both the internal coherence and the continuing relevance of the political visions that shape modern politics.