PHIL 245 - Freedom, Self-Consciousness, and Alienation: Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

FC ARHU

4 credits
In the 19th century, philosophers began to think about the sociality of reason; that is, about how philosophy itself is conditioned by the social, cultural, and historical contexts in which philosophical thinking is carried out. Their turn toward social reflection had ramifications for the way that thinkers such as Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche understood what it is to be truly free, what it means to know ourselves to be so, and what happens when we are estranged from ourselves and from our surroundings. We will study the works of these and several other authors to better grasp the status of our own self-conscious freedom (or lack thereof).

Prerequisites: one course in PHIL.