POS3931: Politics of Good and Evil

(MW: 1500-1615) 

Good and evil are in every facet of political behavior and political science.  They are what every political scientist is concerned with.  Even value-neutral social scientific inquiry is no exception, since almost every social scientist hopes that his or her work will serve the good.  Yet seldom do we think in political science about what we mean when we call something good or evil. 

 We are going to approach good and evil from two perspectives:  

1. The social-psychological perspective.  Can we explain why men and women do good and evil in particular circumstances?  Here the focus will be on explanation.
2. Conceptual analysis.  What do we mean when we call something good or evil? For example, does it add anything to call something “evil” that is not contained in the term “very bad”?  In our conceptual analysis we shall focus on the meaning of good and evil.

 The trick will be to figure out how much a clearer conceptual analysis of good and evil can contribute to our explanations of phenomena called good and evil.