Political Theory 101

Mar 26 2025 89 ep. 82 mins 694
Political Theory 101 Podcast artwork

A podcast about political theory. Freely available to all, but we'd love your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/politicaltheory101 Also available on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play

  Government
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The Politics of Plato's Parmenides

Mar 26 2025 96 mins  
We discuss how Plato used dialectical thinking to deal with objections to the theory of the forms. Then we discuss how this kind of thinking enriches our ability to make use of all sorts of political concepts and abstractions.

John Morley & the Politics of Compromise

Mar 04 2025 87 mins  
We discuss the work of John Morley, a British viscount heavily involved in the government of Ireland and India during the late 19th and early 20th century. Morley was a liberal, but he was often in situations in which his liberalism was pushed to its limit. We discuss how he thought about liberty as a young man, and how he worked to put his beliefs into practice in difficult circum

The Politics of Plato's Philebus

Dec 21 2024 117 mins  
Daniel joins Benjamin to discuss Plato's Philebus. We traverse the dialectic of limit and unlimit and discuss the difference between memory and recollection, connecting all of this to Plato's political thought.

Clausewitz (w/Elizabeth Dearden-Williams)

Nov 19 2024 58 mins  
Elizabeth Dearden-Williams, a former student of mine from Cambridge who is currently pursuing a masters, comes on to discuss the work of the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz.

Cutrone and the Party (w/Chris Cutrone)

Oct 08 2024 100 mins  
Chris Cutrone joins Benjamin for a discussion of political parties, focusing on the role pluralism plays in Chris' thinking about party structure.

John Milton as a Political Theorist (w/Raeffe Gibson)

Aug 02 2024 68 mins  
John Milton isn't just the author of Paradise Lost! Raeffe Gibson makes a guest appearance to discuss his role in the English Civil War.

Michael Pettis as a Political Theorist

Jun 16 2024 66 mins  
Alex and Benjamin discuss the work of Michael Pettis, putting him in conversation with older theorists of imperialism like J.A. Hobson and Vladimir Lenin.

Samuel Huntington

May 25 2024 78 mins  
Alex and Benjamin discuss Huntington's early emphasis on centralization and institutions, his turn toward civilizational thinking, and the position of religion - and particularly Catholicism - in his account.

Frédéric Bastiat

May 02 2024 66 mins  
Alex and Benjamin explore the history of political thought from the point of view of Bastiat - who threw many ancient and enlightenment thinkers together into the basket of plunderers. If we think we come from God whole and complete, the need for civic education falls away...

Terry Eagleton

Apr 16 2024 64 mins  
Alex and Benjamin discuss Terry Eagleton's work, focusing on interactions between religion and Marxism in the context of the "end of history" - the 1990s and beyond.