Contemporary Continental Philosophy

3 units

An examination of central texts of 20th-century philosophical thought in France and Germany. The work of Hegel and Heidegger will be considered, as well as that of thinkers they have influenced such as Adorno, Gadamer, and Habermas (in Germany), and Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, and Irigaray (in France). These philosophers reject any idea of pure knowledge and experience, and have reconceptualized human existence and understanding as fundamentally historicized, embodied, and linguistic. A focal question that this raises is, what does this reconceptualization mean for ideals of humanism? Prerequisites: one course in Philosophy at the 100 or 200-level, or permission of the instructor.