The claim that the human being is a political animal has accompanied us since Aristotle. In this course, we will explore how our conception of the human being impacts on our understanding of politics. During the course we will explore how the tradition of political philosophy determined its proposals on the state and political participation on the specific understanding of human animality that is advanced. We will read parts of Aristotle’s Politics, Machiavelli’s Discourses, Hobbes’ Leviathan, and Kojève’s Introduction to the reading of Hegel. In this way, the course will also serve as a general overview of modern western philosophy. The class will be based on direct presentation and discussion of specific passages and participants are invited but not required to read the texts in advance.