Kant Through Contemporary Thought

Catalog description

This course is a survey of Western philosophy from the nineteenth century until today. It begins with the rise of German idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) and its nineteenth century critics, for example, the "dialectics of suspicion" concerning the transcendental subject as elaborated by Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, or the utilitarian tradition. Depending on student or faculty interest, the course may continue with a study of existentialism and phenomenology ( for example, the analysis of lived experience and intersubjectivity), logical positivism and analytic philosophy (for example, the linguistic turn, or philosophical reflections on science and scientific method), and/or critical theory, poststructuralism and postmodernism (e.g., critiques of positivism and metanarratives, as well as the introduction of the relational subject).