European Intellectual History

Catalog description

An introduction to the intellectual history of Europe since the Enlightenment studied through analysis and important documents of philosophy, political and social theory, literature and art. A central focus of this course will be the consciousness of a crisis of modern society and culture that permeated broad sections of nineteenth and twentieth century thought. The course begins with an examination of the humanistic values of the Enlightenment, traces their fate in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and concludes with the question of their survival in our time. Readings will be selected from a variety of thinkers - Voltaire, Goethe, Hegel, Marx, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kafka, Max Weber, Freud, Brecht, Sartre, Orwell, and Foucault - representing a broad spectrum of philosophic and political opinion. At the same time an attempt will be made to examine the history of ideas within the broader framework of the political, social, economic, and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. EUR