Government and Politics

Course summary

‘Politics is war by other means’. Politics exists because people disagree; they disagree about how they should live (moral questions), about who should get what (resource questions) and about who should make decisions (power questions). For the Greek philosopher Aristotle, politics was the ‘master science’: that is, nothing less than the activity through which people try to improve their lives and create the ‘good society’. Politics is designed for students who have an interest in the world around them — ones who want to know more about the society they live in, how it works and how it could work. It is for students who enjoy debate, discussion and argument — ones who are comfortable with the fact that in politics there are no simple ‘rights’ or ‘wrongs’ and for students who like to think for themselves — ones who want to develop their own views, rather than accept the views of others.