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R. Eldridge
Papazian 215
x8428; 328-4967
reldrid1
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, problems emerged in Kant's account of the
natures of knowledge and moral obligation. Direct inquiries into various human faculties taken
on their own in individuals --cognitive faculties such as sensibility and understanding and
practical faculties such as the will-- had seemingly reached a dead end. Dogmatisms and
skepticisms of various kinds abounded. Kant was generally thought to have failed to refute
either epistemological or moral skepticism. In as much as Kant's epistemology and moral theory
themselves summarize and complete the development of modern philosophy, with its dualistic
conception of self-moving individual mind and passive, law-regulated nature, the impasse
reached in Kantian inquiries may be taken as requiring a general transformation of the modern
concepts of mind and nature and hence of philosophy itself as a medium of inquiry.
As a result, 19th century philosophers began to push their investigations beyond inquiries
into the human cognitive and practical faculties seemingly simply possessed by individuals.
They began to investigate as well the fundamental substances and deep structures of Being that
underlie and shape ordinary consciousness and action. Forms of social life, ethoi, or
Sittlichkeiten in particular became objects of philosophical inquiry, as understanding and willing
were taken to be events within social and historical struggles to achieve g oodness and
knowledge, rather than as primitive human faculties. Social historical reality (together with
whatever substances and forces underlie it) came to be seen as the vehicle for the development of
human self-consciousness, justice, and goodness, as the arena in which tele or aims, human
(Marx, Feuerbach) or even quasi-divine (Hegel) might be achieved.
Against the background of the reaction to Kant and modern philosophy, we will examine
Fichte's metaphysics of the Absolute Ego, Hegel's historical phenomenology of Spirit, and
Marx's historical account of the development of human species-being and class struggle as
efforts to characterize what there most fundamentally is and how it matters to knowledge,
morality, and human historical development. Nietzsche's critical reaction to these efforts will be
investigated, in particular both as an anticipation of certain post-modern themes such as the
disappearance of the substantial self or agent and the relativity of value and as an expression of
anti-philosophical naturalism.
We will consider to what extent Hegelian historical phenomenology and Marxist material
history accurately locate problems in Kantian philosophy and in modernity, and to what extent
they remain explanatorily powerful and plausible, against Nietzsche's criticisms. In this way, we
will consider the importance of Hegel and Marx for the contemporary philosophical problems of
modernity and post-modernity. Are Hegel and Marx irrational historicists who have betrayed the
genuine individualist Kantian values of the Enlightenment? Are they deluded anti-scientific
apologists for some impossible non-naturalist philosophy? Or do they mark out genuine
possibilities for self-understanding and the achievement of knowledge and justice through
historical action? What ought we to make of the Kantian critical-transcendental legacy in
philosophy?
Schedule of Readings
wk.# Tues. Reading
1
9/2
9/9
9/16
9/23
9/30
10/7
10/14
OCTOBER BREAK
11/4
10
11 11/18
Marx's Economics I
Marx, Capital
Part I, Chs. 1-3
Part II, Chs. 4-6
Wolff, "Reflections on Literary Style and Social
Theory: The Case of Karl Marx's Capital"
Wolff, Understanding Marx, Intro., Chs. 1, 4
Wartofsky, "Is Marx's Labor Theory of Value Excess
Metaphysical Baggage?"
Elster, An Introduction to Karl Marx,
Ch. 4, Marxian Economics
14 12/9
Nietzsche
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
"The Prejudices of the Philosophers," from
Beyond Good and Evil (in Gardiner)
The Use and Abuse of History
Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History"
Breazale, "Aground on the Ground of Values: Friedrich Nietzsche"
Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Ch. 7
Deleuze, Nomad Thought
Shapiro, How One Becomes What One is Not
Lorraine, Nietzsche = pp. 134-150 of Gender, Identity and
the Production of Meaning