This is a seminar on the implications of reading practices and critical models with specific reference to the problem of political judgment and practical reasoning more generally. The central issue for seminar will be the problem of practical reasoning, as it is foregrounded in and through the reading of imaginative texts.

There will be a course reader including selections from Plato's Republic, Homer's Odyssey, The Book of Job, The Book of Jonah, and most of Jonathan Edwards' The Nature of True Virtue.

Reserve reading will include essays from What's Left of Theory (2000), and selections from Gayatri Spivak's The Death of a Discipline (2003)

The principal literary texts are: William Shakespeare, The Tempest; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Henry James, The Wings of the Dove.

Each student will need a fairly current large anthology of works in critical theory; Critical Theory since Plato, 3rd edition is recommended, but not required; alternatives are The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism or Richter, The Critical Tradition.