Truth and Certainty in the Philosophy of History

Catalog description

Through a survey of thinkers from antiquity to the present, this graduate seminar will consider the gaps between historical events and historiographic writing, and the strategies authors use to fill them. Readings will include selections from premodern historians in East and West, and modern historians from Hegel and Kant to the present. Themes will include idealism vs. materialism, postmodernism, feminism, psychology, and the significance of forgetting. Chinese versions, when available, will be allowed for use in preparation for class.