This course explores some of the central questions in Social and Political Philosophy as well as some well-developed attempts to answer these questions: What makes a government legitimate? What should the goal of government be? Is it to maximize justice, to maximize liberty, to provide common defense, or something else? What is justice? What is liberty? Readings are drawn from prominent historical and contemporary thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, Rawls, Nozick, Cohen, Okin.