It's that time of the year again when wayward grad students grub for sessional positions...
Last year I put together a monster of a first term reading list for a course on Religion, Law and Morality ("western") - with selected readings from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Mill, Marx and Nietzsche (yep, that's 1 a week with one weeks grace in a 13 week semester). I have the option of doing this again or thinking it through a little differently. Some of these writings are unbearable and I won't do them again.
If I have to pick 6 or 7 people to focus on... stuff that will make the "religion, law and morality" make sense for the second semester (when we look at the fun stuff from Arendt to Zizek). So what would y'all recommend?
I came up with this: Plato (Republic), Aristotle (Ethics), Locke (Let on Toleration), Mandeville (Fable of Bees), Kant & Hegel (categorical imperative and world history), Rousseau (Politcs and the Arts), and Marx (selected readings from the M-E Reader). I think most of the "basic" concepts are here: politics, religion, the social contract, political economy, and the enlightenment.
Offlist recommendations (with explanations) are welcome.
Thanks, ken