Explores fundamental questions concerning the nature and legitimacy of major social and political institutions. Topics may include the nature of freedom; the meaning and value of democracy; competing conceptions of justice; the basis of political authority; civil disobedience; human dignity and individual rights; social conflict, tyranny, and war; just and unjust distributions of wealth; the relation between ethics and politics; the nature of political belief; and arguments for and against socialism, communism, libertarianism, and anarchism.
