European Intellectual History since Nietzsche

“In the hut’s book, glancing towards the well’s star, in the hope of a word to come.”—Paul Celan, 1966. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late … Read More Read More

“In the post-totalitarian system, this line runs de facto through each person, for everyone in his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system.”—Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless.” HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant … Read More Read More

“I often describe deconstruction as something which happens. It’s not purely linguistic, involving text or books. You can deconstruct gestures, choreography. That’s why I enlarged the concept of text.”—Jacques Derrida. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. … Read More Read More

“Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.”—Michael Foucault, The History of Sexuality vol. I. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from … Read More Read More

“Violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred.”—René Girard, Violence and the Sacred. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to … Read More Read More

“. . .we must never lose sight of the fact that, in both anthropological and linguistic research, we are dealing strictly with symbolism.” –Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology.” HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual … Read More Read More

“. . . man is essentially a being of praxis.” –Mihailo Marković, 1975. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to modernity through … Read More Read More

“The Other wrenches me from my hypostatise, from the here, at the heart of being or the center of the world where, privileged, and in this sense primordial, I posit myself.”—Emmanuel Levinas, “Philosophy and Awakening.” HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends … Read More Read More

“We conceive her as hesitating between the role of object, of Other that is proposed to her and her claim for freedom.”—Simone de Beauvoir. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a … Read More Read More

“. . .totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within. In this sense it eliminates the distance between the rulers and the ruled. . .” –Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends … Read More Read More

“Enlightenment is totalitarian.”—Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to modernity through the late 20th … Read More Read More

“Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.”—Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism.” HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition … Read More Read More

“Dasein is an entity which does not just occur amongst other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very being, that being is an issue for it.”—Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant … Read More Read More

“To the things themselves!”—Edmund Husserl. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to modernity through the late 20th century transition to post-modernity. Following … Read More Read More

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”—Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a … Read More Read More

“The first of these displeasing propositions of psycho-analysis is this: that mental processes are essentially unconscious, and that those which are conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of the whole psychic entity.” – Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce … Read More Read More

“We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without.”—V. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done? HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual … Read More Read More

“All the molds crack.”— Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to modernity through the late 20th century transition … Read More Read More

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?”—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch … Read More Read More

“A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism.”—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to … Read More Read More

“The truth is the whole.” –G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to modernity through … Read More Read More

“You see, gentlemen, reason is unquestionably a fine thing, but reason is no more than reason, and it gives fulfillment only to man’s reasoning capacity, while desires are a manifestation of the whole of life. . .”—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to … Read More Read More

“Our Western heritage is reason—reason, analysis, action, progress!” –Settembrini the organ-grinder in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century … Read More Read More

“In general modern man has no solutions.”—Alexander Herzen, From the Other Shore. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The class aims to sketch a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to modernity through the … Read More Read More