HST7799 – Method and Practice in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History 2024/25

This course provides an essential grounding in modern intellectual history and political thought. It introduces students to the most important kinds of methodology practised in the field of intellectual history since the nineteenth century, and some of the most influential thinkers and themes in the history of political thought since antiquity. It is divided into two parts, corresponding to semesters one and two respectively. The first part covers a variety of key philosophical, historical, political and sociological theorists whose work has inspired a range of approaches in the history of ideas in Anglo-American and European scholarship. The second part involves in-depth exploration of the thought of a selection of major authors and thematic concerns in the history of European political thought, considering them in the light of the different methodologies surveyed in the first part.