PHILOSOPHY COURSE DESCRIPTIONS - FALL 2001

311 NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY

2:00-2:50 MWF       311 GH

Schacht

European philosophers after Kant moved in a variety of different directions, as they sought to bring philosophy into closer connection with the concrete reality of human existence, and to achieve a more comprehensive and penetrating understanding of it than their predecessors had.  This made the 19th century an extraordinarily rich and interesting one in the history of modern philosophy, in which the foundations were laid for the main alternatives developed by European philosophers in the 20th century.

This course will focus on a number of the most important and influential thinkers in this crucial period, and primarily upon aspects of the thought of the Famous Four: Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. (Some attention will also be given to Schiller, Fichte, Feuerbach, Mill and Schopenhauer.) Through an examination of selections from some of their most accessible major writings, we will consider what they took the main tasks of philosophy to be, how they pursued them, and how they proposed to deal with a number of significant issue relating to the interpretation and assessment of various forms of human existence, knowledge, valuation, morality, and social life.

The only real prerequisites of this course are strong interest and a willingness to devote a good deal of time and effort to it.  There will be a considerable amount of reading, and some of it will be quite challenging.  Those who make a real effort, however, should be able to handle it, and should get a good deal out of it.

Course requirements: (1) one or two short essays;(2) a term paper toward the end of the semester; and (3) a final examination.

Readings will include Nietzsche, and shorter works or selections by the others mentioned in a course pack.