PHIL 312: History of Philosophy: 19th Century

Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche can be described as “masters of suspicion.” In different yet equally groundbreaking ways, they call into question perennial philosophical assumptions about reality, knowledge, and value. What they share, however, is a deep suspicion of abstract accounts of the self. In their texts we thus find accounts of the self as embodied—as inextricably bound to desire, need, and affect. We also find accounts of the self as irreducibly social—other selves, relations of labor and power, and history are constitutive of the self. Albeit in different ways, then, the body, other selves, and socio-historical relations mediate our engagement with the world as knowers and agents. In this course, we will read selections from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; Marx’s early and mature economic and philosophical writings; and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality. Although not exclusively, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche were responding to Kant’s Copernican Revolution. Therefore, we will begin the course by examining selections from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. We will also consider feminist critiques of Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche.