JDS 725SEM - Politics, Ethics and Religion

The intersection of politics, ethics and religion has always been a major factor in the organization and self-understanding of humanity. Though politics deals with power, the authority of power, however Machiavellian, has always couched itself in the language of good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice. And the latter derive historically from a religious context, of God, communion, covenant, salvation and redemption. This course focuses on a few illuminating instances of such intersections in the West: Augustinian politics; Enlightenment secularism, American Puritanism, Jewish humanism and Marxist socialism. Credits: 3