Intro to Continental Philosophy

4.0 credits

This course introduces students to the major themes, methods, and aims of what is called “continental philosophy,” namely the thought that developed in continental Europe in the wake of Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, and that flourished in the twentieth century in such thinkers as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. We will examine the major currents of continental philosophy—existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism—to understand its wide-ranging influence on the arts, humanities, and social sciences. A major portion of the course will be devoted to a careful study of Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) and Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943). Readings by Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Ricoeur. Conducted in English.