# First Day

## August 17th, 2020

-   Ah, the first day of a brand-new semester. The fresh, COVID-scented breeze of a new time
-   Dr. Kirkman claims he's prone to "teaching anxiety nightmares" right before the start of a new term - "I had one where I was scheduled to teach 2 different classes at the same time"
    -   Apologies for thinking this class was on Tuesday instead of Monday/Wednesday - sorry!
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-   "If you watched the recorded lecture I made on Canvas, a lot of this will be repetitious, so my apologies"
-   Now, we're being taught by Dr. Robert Kirkman - "NOT The Walking Dead guy"
    -   Dr. Kirkman did his undergrad at Miami University in Ohio, and his Phd. at Stony Brook
-   Usual online class points of etiquette: please mute your microphone if you're not talking, and so forth
    -   I know this is a strange semester with COVID and all, and I certainly understand if you take that seriously; I myself am starting to get some cabin fever
    -   I know this is odd, and I prefer classroom learning for the most part, but online learning can still get done and even has some advantages!
        -   As a professor, online discussion boards actually made it EASIER for me to give students individual feedback
        -   Having your name labeled, too, makes it easier for me to memorize your names
        -   And, of course, for introverts like me, being able to type out your questions makes it more comfortable for people who normally would never raise their hands in class
    -   "On the other hand, online learning makes it strange to develop a sense of community in the classroom"

-   Okay, we're now going to break the classroom into randomly-assigned breakout rooms, just as a test for me
    -   A question to discuss for ~7 minutes while you're there ("10 too long, 5 too short"): what IS the definition of politics?
        -   "I expect there to be some disagreement or a few different definitions; that's okay!"
        -   On your own, write down your own private 1-sentence definition somewhere
            -   Me: "Politics: The effort of devising and refining a system of government for a group of people (be it implicit/explicit, top-down/organically, etc.)"
                -   What's "a system of government"? In my book, some way of delegating power among leaders/laws/etc.
        -   BEFORE you begin discussing, make sure to introduce yourselves! Just something simple like your name, major, where you're working from, etc.
    -   "Now, the breakout rooms won't give you a time warning until 30s are left, so they might end rather abruptly"
        -   Common themes in my room:
            -   Has to deal with a group of people
            -   How people form a system of rules governing how a body of people ought to behave

-   So, there are some themes that keep coming up in our definitions of politics:
    -   Involves a group or community of people
        -   "A question for later: can politics apply even to very small groups of 2 or 3 people, or is that just 'regular ethics' at that point? What about families? How is politics distinct?"
    -   About governments/institutions/systems of rules
    -   Regulates the behavior of people
    -   Deals with how decisions are made, and my whom
        -   "WHO gets to have power?"
    -   Seems to come into play when people DISAGREE about ideas, involving debate and compromise
        -   "That's another question for later: how much common ground do people need to share to have an effective system of politics? Do they need any? Do they need to agree on almost everything?"
    -   Involves the power to enforce decisions, or "coercion"
        -   Relevant current topic: should the government have the power to "coerce" people to wear masks, and punish them if they don't comply?
            -   "Reasonable people of goodwill can disagree, I think, but the question is at least debatable on both sides; some coercion certainly seems to go too far, but to say the government can't coerce us to follow ANY policies seems wrong as well - that would mean you could never be arrested!"
        -   Either way, the use of "coercive power," and under what circumstances that use is legitimate, is near the heart of politics
            -   "The word politics, by the way, comes out of a Greek context of how cities should govern themselves, and in the Greek mindset you couldn't live a complete life as a pure individual - instead, you HAD to be part of the 'polis', the community"
            -   Note that persuading someone, or doing something by agreement after debate, is NOT coercive power

-   So, as the professor, here's MY punchline theme of politics: "the legitimate use of power"
    -   Political philosophy is REALLY broad - "you could spend a whole course just on Aristotle" - so we have to narrow something down
    -   Nowadays, this question of what makes the use of power legitimate is largely based on the will of the governed - in other words, DEMOCRACY!
        -   However, there've been a lot of variations of democracy
    -  "One thing that's important is to understand that I'll be using the word 'liberal' in the CLASSICAL sense, not in the contemporary political sense of leftist"
        -   In the classical sense, LIBERAL means "concerned with the freedom of the individual"
            -   So, a "liberal society" is one that tries to respect that freedom and allow individual people to make their own decisions
        -   Similarly, classical conservatism just meant trying to preserve the GOOD parts of previous political or social structures; modern
            -   "The point is, modern terminology got really messed up at some point"
    -   So, there are a few different models of democracies we're going to study in the course
        -   LIBERAL DEMOCRACY is the position John Locke takes, and focuses on the individual and maximizing individual freedoms
        -   REPUBLICAN DEMOCRACY focuses on the republic as a whole, the "body politic," and was espoused by John-Jacques Rousseau
        -   PROCEDURAL DEMOCRACY is a more recent approach, which tries to join the 2 and focuses instead on the political process of deliberation itself (rooted especially in critical theory)
            -   This came out of a lot of things, but we'll be reading Iris Young's work on this position ("an impressive philosopher who sadly died fairly young at the University of Chicago")

-   Now, for the course structure: I want these live sessions to be largely discussion-based, similar to what we did today in breaking into small groups, discussing in small 4-5 person groups, coming together as a class again, and then me trying to tie things together
    -   I will post 1-2 brief recorded lectures each week that are more instructional in nature; "hopefully these'll be only 10-15 minutes each"
    -   Each of the 3 texts on the syllabus are REQUIRED - if at all possible, I'd get a hard copy of them, and try to get the same editions/translations we're using as a class

-   For Wednesday, there's a reading on Canvas by Jurgen Habermas called "3 Normative Models of Democracy"
    -   This is a short but VERY dense reading; "Habermas, ironically, wrote a lot about communicative ethics, but his work is notoriously technical and difficult to understand - although this article is fairly short"
-   Alright, see me in office hours if you have any questions, and see you later!