Politics is a fundamental aspect of our lives, but what is “political” about it is a question that we rarely pose to ourselves. Political philosophy is the branch of philosophy that attempts to answer this question, but in doing so, it reveals how philosophical activity is already enmeshed in political problems, as well as how political practice already entails philosophical ideas and commitments. This course proposes to introduce students to the paradoxical character of political philosophy by means of a panoramic analysis of fundamental political philosophical topics focusing on three concepts: politics, right, and violence. Instead of following a chronological path of the Western canon, the course proposes to put the history of philosophy in a new light by joining together foundational texts with critiques, contextualizations, and reinterpretations. Authors to be discussed include Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, and Rawls, but also critical and contemporary figures such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Clastres, Marshall Sahlins, David Graeber, Ernesto Laclau, Bruno Latour, Frantz Fanon, Carole Pateman, Charles Mills, Étienne Balibar, Jacques Rancière, Achille Mbembe, Nancy Fraser, Elsa Dorlin, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and Davi Kopenawa.