Class 12: Heideggerean Existentialism

Class 12: Heideggerean Existentialism

“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 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 an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.

Class 11: Phenomenology

Class 11: Phenomenology

“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 an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.

Class 10: Modernism and the Avant-Garde

Class 10: Modernism and the Avant-Garde

“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 narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to modernity through the late 20th century transition to post-modernity. Following an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is available to watch on YouTube.

Class 9: Freudian Psychoanalysis

Class 9: Freudian Psychoanalysis

“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 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 an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.

Class 8: Leninism, the Rushing of History

Class 8: Leninism, the Rushing of History

“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 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 an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.

Class 7: Henri Bergson – Revolt Against Positivism

Class 7: Henri Bergson – Revolt Against Positivism

“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 to post-modernity. Following an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.

Class 6: Nietzsche and the Death of God

Class 6: Nietzsche and the Death of God

“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 a narrative arc from the late 18th century transition to modernity through the late 20th century transition to post-modernity. Following an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.

Class 5: Marxism

Class 5: Marxism

“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 modernity through the late 20th century transition to post-modernity. Following an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.

Class 4: Hegel and the Historicist Chronotope

Class 4: Hegel and the Historicist Chronotope

“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 the late 20th century transition to post-modernity. Following an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.

Class 3: The Legacy of Romanticism

Class 3: The Legacy of Romanticism

“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 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 an overview of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, we move through Hegelianism and Marxism and then on to Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God. (God had been multifunctional, fulfilling epistemological, ontological and ethical roles. His death left an enormous empty space. Much of modern thought could be described as an attempt to replace God.) Topics include Marxism-Leninism, psychoanalysis, expressionism, structuralism, phenomenology, existentialism, anti-politics, and deconstruction. Authors include Nietzsche, Lenin, Kafka, Freud, Husserl, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, Girard, Foucault, Derrida and Havel.
With Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History at Yale.

This lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.