Making Political Theory Engaging

Political Theory can be… complicated. But we here at Crash Course are in the business of making the complex understandable, so we took this series as a challenge. We used lots of tools in our toolbox to make that possible, one of them being the investigative tone for the series.

You might have noticed that our host, Ellie, framed things a little differently from other Crash Course series. You might see clips from her research journey through the various texts of political philosophers, or catch her saying things like, “And that got me thinking…” or “But what about this?”

We chose this approach in order to create a fun, curious environment for learning about political theory. A lecture in philosophy is cool for a college classroom, but not very Crash-Course-y. Instead, we wanted Ellie to learn alongside the viewer, and for the audience to be active participants in philosophical inquiry and to decide what they think for themselves. When it comes to political theory, questions lead to more questions, which lead to even more questions, which is sort of the point.

As Ellie says in our final episode, how we get to a more just society is “the question of political theory, and that’s the task that’s perpetually ahead of us.” In this era of political uncertainty, sometimes asking questions is how to move forward. Even if we don’t land on a specific answer, the questioning helps us understand the world around us better and more deeply.