Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

Description

This course explores the roots of the great Right-Left political divide that emerged as part of an eighteenth-century debate between two formidable intellectual figures, Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. This was an exchange of foundational arguments that continue to define American and Western political discourse in our time, distinguishing a party of conservation from a party of progress.

Students will read primary text excerpts from Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine as well as engaging secondary scholarship, thereby demonstrating an understanding of Burke and Paine’s larger bodies of writing and their views on themes such as history, nature, society, reason, political institutions, freedom, equality, rights, reform, revolution and other key subjects. 

This course is available to Certificate students only.