The Great Power Show: From Plato to Populists - Political Philosophy for Our Times

Prof. Steven Smith’s Open Yale Course on Political Philosophy is not just a masterful survey of Western political thought, from Socrates to Tocqueville and his contemporaries, but also a welcome opportunity to step back from the churn of headlines and reflect on the enduring debates they echo.

How are economic globalisation and the resurgence of populism and nationalism reshaping the relationship between the individual, the community, and the state? How did earlier thinkers grapple with these tensions, and how are today’s societies addressing them? In this episode of The Great Power Show, Prof. Smith discusses these topics and more with Manoj Kewalramani.

Access the full podcast on Spotify

(Also available on Apple and Substack)

Prof. Smith’s recent works:

• Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes

• Modernity and Its Discontents – Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois from Machiavelli to Bellow