Long before the idea of nature comes to be associated with the vocabularies of environmentalism and climate change, the study of nature as a real and imaginary category has informed human self-understanding, molding the ways in which political ideals and institutions are designed and construed. While nature nurtures humans along with other beings, the numerous mysteries that it poses - some still unresolved - continue to destabilize politics' promise of orderliness and set limits to the emancipatory potential of social arrangements of various kinds. The endeavor to tame nature's whim and parse its inner logic - be it through science or art - proclaims to liberate us from the disillusionment with our own state of powerlessness without ever settling the tension between humans and their surroundings. The looming threat of the climate crisis and the global pandemic further reminds us of the persistent challenges brought to politics by our embeddedness in the physical world. How does the idea of nature, along with the various methods deployed to examine it, give rise to key concepts in our political thinking, including law, state, and property? What aspirations can various accounts of nature bring to politics in terms of what the latter can hope to achieve with regard to freedom, equality, and happiness? How are human beings supposed to arrange their own societies vis-à-vis their neighbors - human and nonhuman - with whom they share the earthly realm? These are the questions that we ask and explore with inspirations from major political thinkers present and past.
5 units · Letter or Credit/No Credit · GER: WAY-ER
Long before the idea of nature comes to be associated with the vocabularies of environmentalism and climate change, the study of nature as a real and imaginary category has informed human self-understanding, molding the ways in which political ideals and institutions are designed and construed. While nature nurtures humans along with other beings, the numerous mysteries that it poses - some still unresolved - continue to destabilize politics' promise of orderliness and set limits to the emancipatory potential of social arrangements of various kinds. The endeavor to tame nature's whim and parse its inner logic - be it through science or art - proclaims to liberate us from the disillusionment with our own state of powerlessness without ever settling the tension between humans and their surroundings. The looming threat of the climate crisis and the global pandemic further reminds us of the persistent challenges brought to politics by our embeddedness in the physical world. How does the idea of nature, along with the various methods deployed to examine it, give rise to key concepts in our political thinking, including law, state, and property? What aspirations can various accounts of nature bring to politics in terms of what the latter can hope to achieve with regard to freedom, equality, and happiness? How are human beings supposed to arrange their own societies vis-à-vis their neighbors - human and nonhuman - with whom they share the earthly realm? These are the questions that we ask and explore with inspirations from major political thinkers present and past.
Offered in Winter 2026 at Stanford University.