How to do Political Philosophy: Methods and Methodology

About

This online course explores the methods and methodology of contemporary political philosophy. By the end of the course you will be able to:

1. make sophisticated arguments in political theory
2. analyse the arguments of others
3. make contributions yourself to the growing ‘methodological’ literature in the subject

The course blends asynchronous pre-class assignments, such as readings and pre-recorded videos, with three hours of live teaching each day. These sessions are structured to encourage group discussions and a variety of individual and group activities, all focused on crafting your own arguments.

You will need some familiarity with key debates in political theory, at least from introductory undergraduate / postgraduate courses, including those concerning, say, freedom, equality, justice, democracy, and so on.

ECTS Credits

3 ECTS credits awarded for engaging fully in class activities.

Instructor

Jonathan Floyd is Professor in Political Theory at the University of Bristol, and Chair of the ECPR Standing Group on Methods in Normative Political Theory. For more than ten years, he has shaped debates about the nature, methods, and purposes of political philosophy. He is currently finishing our subject’s first ‘monograph’ on methods and methodology for Oxford University Press (2025), with parts of that book forming key materials within this course. He is also the author of three major book projects feeding into that material:

• Political Philosophy versus History? Contextualism and Real Politics in Contemporary Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2011, co-edited with Marc Stears)
• Is Political Philosophy Impossible? Thoughts and Behaviour in Normative Political Theory (Cambridge University, 2017)
• What’s the Point of Political Philosophy? (Polity Press, 2019)

Jonathan's research supports a unique and methods-focused approach to teaching political philosophy, aimed at getting students to argue for themselves. This has led to a number of prizes, including: 

2016 'Best of Bristol' prize, awarded for winning the most votes in a competition to find the University's 'best' lecturers
2017 'Outstanding Teaching' prize in Social Sciences and Humanities, given at the University of Bristol Teaching Awards
2021 'Jennie Lee Prize', given by the Political Studies Association (PSA) for career contribution to the teaching of political theory/philosophy in higher education

Away from teaching, Jonathan's research has also been recognised with several grants and prizes, including a 'Rising Star' award from the British Academy (BA) in 2018 and a major ‘Leadership Fellowship’ in ‘Public Political Philosophy’ from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2022 (AHRC).

Recent and ongoing work includes an open access article on Political Philosophy's Methodological Moment as well as a competition-winning article for Political Theory, entitled Post-modern Slavery and Post-human Souls, that introduces and experiments with a new ‘historical fiction’ method of argument, in this case applied to some of the dangers involved in combining AI with human enhancement pressures. Read more about Jonathan here and here .

FULL COURSE OUTLINE