The tenth lecture for this semester’s rendition of SIS-301: systems, structures, and what it means to think about theoretical explanations of world politics that don’t place individuals and their decisions at the center.

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The ninth lecture for SIS-301: contemporary mainstream US IR theory, realism/liberalism/constructivism. And their fundamental similarity as different hypotheses — reductionist hypotheses — about state behavior.

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Lecture 8 for SIS-301 Theories of International Politics. This week’s topic: E. H. Carr, and the rise of social science disciplines as a way of organizing knowledge.

Yes, these lectures are getting longer. I hope to stop that precedent next week, and try to curb my enthusiasm a bit.

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Lecture 7, for your listening enjoyment: Hegel, historical dialectics, and the progress of reason. A little longer than usual, because there was a lot to say.

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The diagrams we drew on the board in class this week — and, full disclosure, that’s not the first time I have used such diagrams — seemed to need a supplemental lecture of their own, as we gather our thoughts before diving into Hegel for the week after the break. Accordingly, here’s a supplemental lecture on the differences in modes of authority between Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Plus some thoughts on universal Reason.

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Lecture 6, Kant. Longer lecture than usual, because with Kant, there is usually a lot more to say.

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Now, after the Vienna interlude, back to our regularly scheduled program: the weekly lectures for SIS-301 “Theories of International Politics.” This week, lecture #5, on Rousseau, in which I suggest that Rousseau is something of a constructivist.

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The fourth lecture for SIS-301 Spring 2012 — this one’s on Locke.

There’s good news and there’s other news. The good news is that I fixed the recording problems from last week, so this file actually plays with intelligible sound. The other news is that I had to completely change my recording set-up, so this file is a .mov rather than a .m4a. It should play in a larger number of players, but the video is a tad lower quality and the file size is much larger. And it’s not chaptered, the way the .m4a files were. That said, it actually works, so overall I think it’s a net gain.

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The third lecture of the semester — Hobbes and the Enlightenment project.

UPDATE — there was some kind of a recording error on this version of the lecture, so it’s inaudible for about the first 25 minutes. Sigh. I don’t have the time to re-do it just at the moment so might I suggest that you listen to the older version here, and then maybe catch the last 10-15 minutes of this one which are properly audible.

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