The German Intellectual Tradition: What is Power?

Catalog description

This course examines critiques, ideas and analyses of power through a rich tradition of German-speaking 19th and 20th Century social and political thought. A medium which eludes our understanding and defies contestations, power represents a permanent fixture in our lives. From power dynamics in the household to power in the state, from social hierarchies to international relations, from cultural artifacts to religious dogma – a host of widely varying problems hinge on notions of power that are continuously reworked and reimagined. Students read a selection of works by authors such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Sabina Spielrein, Rosa Luxemburg, Bertolt Brecht, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt and Karl Mannheim, as well as relevant commentary. Pioneering radically different and influential interpretations of modern power, these thinkers still inform our understanding of the world. Topics range from the source of our moral ideas to the power of interpretation, critiques of society, psychoanalysis and the relation between power, violence and ideology.