Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 - 1859) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America, a two-volume study of the American people and their political institutions. (This image is in the public domain. Source:
Instructor(s)
Dr. Linda Rabieh
MIT Course Number
CC.111
As Taught In
Spring 2013
Level
Undergraduate
Course Description
Course Description
This course examines the modern definition of freedom, and the obligations that people accept in honoring it. It investigates how these obligations are captured in the principles of our political associations. This course also studies how the centrality of freedom plays out in the political thought of such authors as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke and Montesquieu, as well as debating which notions of freedom inspire and sustain the American experiment by careful reading of the documents and arguments of the founding of the United States.
This course is part of the Concourse program at MIT.