Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Reading for Monday

The reading assignments for Monday are short excerpts from the writing of three critics of the idea of rights. Marx's "On the Jewish Question" is in Ishay's collection. The other two, Burke and Bentham, are not. I'm going to select a few pages worth of Burke and give you a link to the document tomorrow. Bentham's essay, "Anarchical Fallacies," his commentary on the rhetoric of rights coming from French revolutionaries, can be found here. This is a 19 page document. For class, I'd like to you read the first 13 pages, Bentham's opening comments and his commentary on the first first, second, and fourth articles of the declaration of rights. This takes you up to line 485.

posted by David Watkins @ 9:46 AM 1 comments

Monday, March 28, 2005

Link to syllabus

here.

posted by David Watkins @ 6:20 PM 1 comments

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Welcome!

This blog will serve as the official homepage for TCSIG 452, The Political Theory of Human Rights, University of Washington, Tacoma. This will be my primary way of communicating with the class outside of class meetings, so you're encouraged to check this website on a regular basis. I'll post reading guides, study questions, announcements, links of interest, and discussion threads. You are encouraged to respond to my posts, to discuss various matters related to this course and the themes and issues it addresses. You can register with blogger, or you can "sign" anonymous posts, or you can post anonymously if you like.

The first order of business will be posting a link to the syllabus. That'll be along shortly. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or concerns.

posted by David Watkins @ 10:55 PM 1 comments