Course Description: This course focuses on several ways that language figures into our understanding of politics, and in so doing will illuminate such contemporary bogeymen as “cancel culture” and “cultural Marxism.” These include formulations of free speech, hate speech, and harmful speech; deployments of misinformation and propaganda; and the pernicious workings of ideology on our beliefs and actions. In exploring these themes we will attempt to better understand the stakes and possible answers to the following questions. Regarding speech: how should we place constraints on speech, and why? What kinds of speech should be constrained, if any? What ideals or principles guide these choices? What are the goods that we aim for when we constrain speech or let it remain completely free? What makes some speech harmful? Regarding propaganda: what is the nature of propaganda, and how does it relate to truth and knowledge? How is it constructed, and how does it do its work on us? What are its goals? How can we avoid being duped by it? And regarding ideology: what is ideology, and how does it affect what we believe, what we do, and how we interact with others, with society, and with the state? How do we uncover the hidden workings of ideology – what is ideology critique? How does ideology relate to our interests as members of different social groups or classes? Cui bono – who benefits? In understanding and answering these questions we will engage with some of the giants of Western social and political thought, including Baruch Spinoza, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Dewey, Antonio Gramsci, Hannah Arendt, and Herbert Marcuse, alongside the many contemporary philosophers working on these important and ever-present topics.
