The class introduces and examines the later modern European philosophy, in the tradition of critical and post-critical philosophy from Kant to Nietzsche, from the end of the Eighteenth century until the beginning of the Twentieth.  Kant revolutionized modern philosophy by setting as its guiding problem the divide between Nature, that we seek to know and constitute thereby, and, Freedom, that we seek to historically accomplish in the world of nature. 

Succeeding philosopher’s accounts for the possibilities of overcoming the divide, revolutionary in their own right, will be studied and assessed: 1) Schiller’s aesthetic reconciliation by means of beauty, 2) Hegel’s philosophical reconciliation by means of reflection upon historical development of consciousness in all areas, 3) Marx’s more purely historical reconciliation by means of active participation in developing history, and especially labor and politics, and 4) Nietzsche’s ideal of health based on overcoming resentment and slave morality in the genealogical development of the ethical agent-subject.

Texts:

Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals ($14 new, ISBN-13: 978-0023078255), Friedrich Shiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man ($30 new, ISBN-13: 978-0826407139), G.W.F Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit ($15 new, ISBN-13: 9780198245971), Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts ($8 new, ISBN-13: 9780717800537), The Communist Manifesto ($3, ISBN-13: 9780717802418), Friedrich Nietzsche ($10 new, ISBN-13: 9780679724629).