PRELIMINARY COURSE SYLLABUS
Course Title: Overcoming the Tradition: Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Arendt Course Code: PHI 90 Instructor: Frederick M. Dolan
Course Summary:
*Please see course page for full description and additional details.
Grade Options and Requirements:
• No Grade Requested (NGR) o This is the default option. No work will be required; no credit shall be received; no proof of attendance can be provided. • Credit/No Credit (CR/NC) o Students must attend at least 80% of class sessions. • Letter Grade (A, B, C, D, No Pass) o Students must attend at least 80% of class sessions and complete short essay evaluating an argument associated with one or more of the authors we study.
*Please Note: If you require proof that you completed a Continuing Studies course for any reason (for example, employer reimbursement), you must choose either the Letter Grade or Credit/No Credit option. Courses taken for NGR will not appear on official transcripts or grade reports.
Required Books:
The Portable Karl Marx ed. Kamenka = PKM Basic Writings of Nietzsche ed. Kaufmann = BWN Heidegger: Basic Writings ed. Krell = HBW The Portable Hannah Arendt ed. Baehr = PHA
Tentative Weekly Outline:
Week 1 Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction, Economico-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology (115-125, 131- 151, 162-196 in PKM). Optional: “Introduction,” “On the Jewish Question,” “Theses on Feuerbach,” (xi-xlv, 96-114, 155-157 in PKM).
Please contact the Stanford Continuing Studies office with any questions 365 Lasuen St., Stanford, CA 94305 [email protected] 650-725-2650
PRELIMINARY COURSE SYLLABUS
Week 2 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Manifesto of the Communist Party (203-241 in PKM). Karl Marx, Capital, Critique of the Gotha Programme (437-460, 533-555 in PKM). Optional: The Class Struggles in France: 1848 to 1850, Grundrisse, The Civil War in France (257-286, 375-393, 509-532 in PKM).
Week 3 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Seventy-Five Aphorisms from Five Volumes,” Beyond Good and Evil, Preface and “On the Prejudices of Philosophers” (145-178, 192-194, 197-221 in BWN). Optional: “Introduction” by Peter Gay, Ecce Homo (ix-xvi, 655-791 in BWN).
Week 4 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, “The Free Spirit” and “What Is Noble” (145-178, 389-427 in BWN) and selections from The Gay Science and Twilight of the Idols (on Canvas). Optional: On the Genealogy of Morals (437-600 in BWN).
Week 5 Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” (111-138, 427-449 in HBW). Optional: “Letter on Humanism,” “The Way to Language” (213-266, 393-426 in HBW).
Week 6 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” (307-342 in HBW). Optional: “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “Building Dwelling Thinking,” “What Calls for Thinking” (139-212, 343-364, 365-392 in HBW).
Week 7 Hannah Arendt, “Expansion,” “Total Domination” (104-145 in PHA), and “Tradition and the Modern Age” (on Canvas). Optional: “Editor’s Introduction,” “What Remains? The Language Remains: A Conversation with Günter Gaus,” “The Perplexities of the Rights of Man,” “The Jews and Society,” “What is Authority?” (vii-lxii, 3-24, 31-45, 75-103, 462-508 in PHA).
Week 8 Arendt, “Labor, Work, Action,” “The Public and the Private Realm,” and “What is Freedom?” (167-230, 438-461 in PHA). Optional: “The Social Question,” “The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern,” “Truth and Politics” (247-277, 278-312, 545-575 in PHA).
Please contact the Stanford Continuing Studies office with any questions 365 Lasuen St., Stanford, CA 94305 [email protected] 650-725-2650
PRELIMINARY COURSE SYLLABUS
Suggestions for further reading:
Marx
For a relatively brief account of the development of Marx’s thought, see Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment. For a comprehensive study of Marxist philosophy, see Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown (3 volumes). Important twentieth- and twenty-first century Marxist philosophers include Georg Lukács (History and Class Consciousness), Theodor W. Adorno (Dialectic of Enlightenment), Herbert Marcuse (Eros and Civilization), G.A. Cohen (Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense), and Jon Elster (Making Sense of Marx). For a treatment of economic theory from a Marxist point of view, see E.K. Hunt and Mark Lautzenheiser, History of Economic Thought: A Critical Perspective. For the history of Marxism in practice, see Robert Service, Comrades! A History of World Communism.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche’s thought is intimately related to his life, so reading a good biography is an excellent way to further acquaint yourself with his work. The best one I know is Rüdiger Safranski’s Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography. (This is not to be confused with Julian Young’s Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, which is often insightful but not nearly as well-written as Safranski’s and is riddled with distracting typographical errors.) Important contemporary philosophers who write about Nietzsche include Maudemarie Clark (Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy), John Richardson (Nietzsche’s System), Brian Leiter (Nietzsche on Morality), Christopher Janaway (Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals), and Paul Katsafanas (The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious).
Heidegger
For a relatively brief account of the development of Heidegger’s philosophy, see Richard F. Poldt, Heidegger: An Introduction. For a readable and reliable introductions to his first major work, see William D. Blattner, Heidegger’s Being and Time: A Reader’s Guide and Paul Gorner, Heidegger’s Being and Time: An Introduction. (For more detailed treatments of this book, see Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division One, Theodor J. Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time, and Blattner, Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism.) Mark Wrathall’s How to Read Heidegger is very helpful. Two influential studies of the development and significance of Heidegger’s thought are William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought and Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition. Rüdiger Safranski’s Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil includes a fair account of Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism. For a more detailed study that relates Heidegger’s political
Please contact the Stanford Continuing Studies office with any questions 365 Lasuen St., Stanford, CA 94305 [email protected] 650-725-2650
PRELIMINARY COURSE SYLLABUS
activities to those of professional philosophers in Nazi Germany more generally, see Hans D. Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany.
Arendt
The standard account of Arendt’s life and work is Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. A relatively brief and reliable introduction to her work is Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves, The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt. For essays by various authors on a wide range of issues pertaining to Arendt’s thought, see Dana Villa (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. On the philosophical background and significance of Arendt’s political philosophy, see Dana Villa’s Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political and Philosophy, Politics, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Other important studies include George Kateb, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil, Margaret Canovan, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of her Political Thought, Robert Pirro, Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy, Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt.
Please contact the Stanford Continuing Studies office with any questions 365 Lasuen St., Stanford, CA 94305 [email protected] 650-725-2650