In the twentieth century, Europe underwent a range of wrenching social and political upheavals that brought into question received truths about ethics, politics, the role of religion, the relationship between the sexes, and the place of Europe in the wider world. Over the course of the semester, we will study a range of different thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Derrida, examining how they responded to these upheavals and offered new ways to thinking about the world and how we should live in it.
What is the best way to organize society? How can we ensure equality between the sexes and different social groups? What is the relationship between religion and modernity? How do we grapple with colonialism, and what is its legacy in the present? How do we promote social change, and when, if ever, is violence required? These were all pressing questions for intellectuals in Europe, as they grappled with one of the most tumultuous periods in human history, encompassing two World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Fascism, the Holocaust, and the collapse of European Empires. In this course, we will examine intellectuals, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jacques Derrida, track the historical developments that provoked their questions, and discuss whether and how their answers continue to resonate in the present.