36
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
Religion and Modernity
Modernity brought new views of knowledge and reality and new methods of inquiry, allowing Western thinkers unprecedented freedom to criticize religion and even to question the existence of God. Learn how this ushered in a tension between faith and suspicion that has endured as a major dynamic of Western religious thought.
1.
Religion and Modernity
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19.
Marx—Religion as False Consciousness
Not everyone agreed with Feuerbach that the power of thought was enough to change human life. Here you see how Karl Marx argued for a more materialistic interpretation of religion and culture, portraying religion as a symptom of a human alienation grounded in social and economic structures.
19.
Marx—Religion as False Consciousness
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2.
From Suspicion to the Premodern Cosmos
Learn how Friedrich Nietzsche's 1882 picture of a meaningless cosmos marked a high point of the modern conflict between faith and suspicion, offering a stark contrast to the once-dominant conception of the Christian cosmos reflected most clearly in the work of the medieval period's major Christian thinker, Thomas Aquinas.
2.
From Suspicion to the Premodern Cosmos
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20.
Nietzsche and the Genealogy of Morals
Friedrich Nietzsche was a critic of both religion and modernity. In examining his On the Genealogy of Morals, you see the clearest expression of his view that the modern period is a culmination of the nihilistic "slave morality" at the heart of Judaism and Christianity.
20.
Nietzsche and the Genealogy of Morals
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3.
From Catholicism to Protestantism
Nietzsche was far from the first challenge posed to Aquinas, as you learn in this examination of the theological, social, and cultural conflicts that began to loosen Catholicism's hold on Europe as early as the 14th century, ultimately paving the way for Martin Luther's radical new Christian vision.
3.
From Catholicism to Protestantism
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21.
Nietzsche—Religion and the Ascetic Ideal
Continuing Nietzsche's Genealogy, you explore his presentation of a process by which "bad conscience" uses religion to increase feelings of guilt, ultimately culminating in Christianity and its "ascetic ideal," of which modern ideals of science and this-worldliness are but the latest stages of development.
21.
Nietzsche—Religion and the Ascetic Ideal
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4.
Scientific Revolution and Descartes
Watch modernity begin with the arrival of the Protestant Reformation, which brought not only religious wars and challenges to established social structures but also a Scientific Revolution and radical new ideas about the cosmos. These changes inspired thinkers like Rene Descartes to reconsider the nature of intellectual authority.
4.
Scientific Revolution and Descartes
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22.
Freud—Religion as Neurosis
Following along the "unmasking" trail blazed by Feuerbach, Sigmund Freud sought to expose religion from a psychological perspective. Here, you see faith presented as a "universal obsessional neurosis" born out of the Oedipal complex, with God as a wish fulfillment of the loving father able to forgive our hatred of him.
22.
Freud—Religion as Neurosis
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5.
Descartes and Modern Philosophy
Grasp how Descartes' efforts to find new foundations for knowledge led him to make sharp distinctions between reason and revelation, philosophy and theology, and make him, for many, the first truly modern philosopher.
5.
Descartes and Modern Philosophy
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23.
Barth and the End of Liberal Theology
Shaken by the brutality of World War I, Karl Barth published Epistle to the Romans, launching 20th-century religious thought and rejecting the liberalism of the 19th century. He argued that the task of the religious thinker is one of "confession," acknowledging and reflecting on God's saving message.
23.
Barth and the End of Liberal Theology
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6.
Enlightenment and Religion
The Enlightenment produced thinkers who embraced a natural, universal human reason they saw as promising freedom from the past and tradition. See how thinkers like John Locke presented religion with modernity's first great challenge: Can religion be rational? Some, like Locke himself, answered the question with a definitive "yes" while others thought the answer was clearly "no."
6.
Enlightenment and Religion
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24.
Theology and Suspicion
Prior to Barth, those suspicious of religion saw it, in varying degrees, as a product of "false-consciousness." Learn in this lecture how Barth and subsequent thinkers like Paul Ricoeur began to integrate this into their analysis, acknowledging how religion can foster illusions and false, mystifying comforts, even as they affirmed the richness, value, and realism of genuine religious faith.
24.
Theology and Suspicion
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7.
Natural Religion and Its Critics
The Enlightenment idealization of reason created its own debates. You learn to contrast the "rationalism" of Descartes—with knowledge's origins found in innate ideas—with the "empiricism" of thinkers like David Hume and Denis Diderot, who argued that knowledge must be grounded in the evidence of our senses.
7.
Natural Religion and Its Critics
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25.
Protestant Theology after Barth
Examine the spectrum of Protestant theology after Barth, from the "correlational theology" that sought to reconcile human experience with Christian revelation to the evangelical ideas of the mid-20th century, which saw revelation as offering "fixed truths" and "moral absolutes" for all times.
25.
Protestant Theology after Barth
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8.
Kant—Religion and Moral Reason
Follow Immanuel Kant's reasoning as he seeks a way beyond the rational-empirical impasse with a "critical philosophy" that claims knowledge is based not in the passive reception of sense impressions, but rather in the mind's active organization of them. From this perspective on the nature of human knowledge, we can never "know" God, but we can rationally postulate God's existence.
8.
Kant—Religion and Moral Reason
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26.
20th-Century Catholicism
In this sweeping examination, you learn that much of the Catholic theology of the 20th century was dedicated to overcoming the antimodernism instituted at the First Vatican Council in 1869—culminating in 1962's
Vatican II—in spite of antimodernist views that continue to hold substantial power.
26.
20th-Century Catholicism
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9.
Kant, Romanticism, and Pietism
Kant's revolutionary ideas were extremely influential and remain so today, but they raised many questions for 19th-century religious thinkers dissatisfied by the idea of God as "postulate." You examine the alternatives offered by two radically different schools of thought.
9.
Kant, Romanticism, and Pietism
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27.
Modern Jewish Philosophy
Focus on the work of Martin Buber—who believed that so-called "I-You" relationships fostered contact with the divine—and that of Franz Rosenzweig, whose "New Thinking" focused on the revelatory encounter with God's love, through which one is released into "the flow of life."
27.
Modern Jewish Philosophy
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10.
Schleiermacher—Religion and Experience
Often called the father of modern theology, Friedrich Schleiermacher was deeply influenced not only by Kant, but also by Romantic and pietist views of religious experience. You grasp his defense of religion as being grounded in a "sense," "intuition," or "feeling" of the whole of the universe.
10.
Schleiermacher—Religion and Experience
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28.
Post-Holocaust Theology
With traditional monotheism holding that God is both omnipotent and benevolent, the problem of "theodicy"—explaining the existence of evil and the suffering of the innocent—has always been problematic. You explore the theological responses to what is perhaps history's most agonizing example.
28.
Post-Holocaust Theology
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11.
Hegel—Religion, Spirit, and History
Learn how the views of Schleiermacher and Kant were challenged by those of G. W. F. Hegel, which stressed our conceptual, not just experiential, knowledge of God and sought to overcome the static rationalism of the Enlightenment. Hegel argued that history was the process by which Absolute Spirit, or God, empties itself in creation and then comes to self-consciousness in humans.
11.
Hegel—Religion, Spirit, and History
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29.
Liberation Theology
Explore how Christian theologians and clergy developed "liberation theology" in response to poverty, colonialism, and an underdeveloped third world. Learn how their work has also influenced feminist and black theologies in Europe and the United States since the 1960s and has influenced a number of different religious traditions.
29.
Liberation Theology
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12.
Theology and the Challenge of History
Some Enlightenment thinkers had questioned whether historical events—such as miracles—could help prove religions; others had begun to study the Bible as a historical document. As historical consciousness achieved dominance in the 19th century, you see how a new set of challenges emerged for religious thinkers.
12.
Theology and the Challenge of History
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30.
Secular and Postmodern Theologies
Increasing secularization has also challenged religious thought in recent decades, as you discover in this bracing look at the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the impact of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida on the work of contemporary thinkers like Mark C. Taylor and Gianni Vattimo.
30.
Secular and Postmodern Theologies
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13.
19th-Century Christian Modernists
You encounter ways in which the challenges of Enlightenment philosophy and modern historical studies were met by a variety of 19th-century Christian modernists. These include Protestants Horace Bushnell and Albrecht Ritschl, the Anglican Oxford movement, and the Tubingen school of Catholic thought.
13.
19th-Century Christian Modernists
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31.
Postmodernism and Tradition
For many, postmodernism offers a way to recover traditional elements of religion. Explore the ways in which this opportunity has been seized by different thinkers, including philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, and theologians who use a "narrative" approach to understand God's revelation as the primary shaping force of life.
31.
Postmodernism and Tradition
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14.
19th-Century Christian Antimodernists
In contrast to liberals and modernists, many Catholic and Protestant thinkers viewed modernity with suspicion. You learn how Catholic antimodernists were successful in increasing papal authority and establishing Aquinas's ideas as foundational, while Protestant resistance took shape in evangelical—especially fundamentalist—ideas.
14.
19th-Century Christian Antimodernists
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32.
Fundamentalism and Islamism
This lecture focuses on two examples of the contemporary resurgence of fundamentalist religion around the world— Christianity in the United States and Islam in the Middle East—exploring the history of each and the way each manifests itself in the modern world.
32.
Fundamentalism and Islamism
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15.
Judaism and Modernity
Step to the other side of the Judeo-Christian tradition to learn how modernity was challenging Jewish thinkers just as it had their Christian contemporaries. And grasp how the distinctiveness of Jewish history—including marginalization and persecution—shaped Jewish thought in different ways, as seen in the 18th-century writings of Moses Mendelssohn and the later work of Herman Cohen.
15.
Judaism and Modernity
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33.
New Atheisms
With the rise of the Christian Right and militant Islam has come a corresponding and vocal rise in various kinds of atheisms, many warning us of the irrationality and violence inherent in religion. You hear two of those voices as you examine the work of Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.
33.
New Atheisms
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16.
Kierkegaard's Faith
Ultimately as influential as Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel, the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard attacked modern efforts to make Christianity "reasonable." You learn how Kierkegaard instead emphasized that faith is only realized in the passionate commitment of the existing, not just the thinking, person.
16.
Kierkegaard's Faith
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34.
Religion and Rationality
Gain important context for understanding that part of the debate that holds faith irrational by definition by exploring the variety of ways in which philosophers of religion approach this often-divisive relationship between religion and rationality.
34.
Religion and Rationality
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17.
Kierkegaard's Paradox
Continue your introduction to Kierkegaard in his Philosophical Fragments, seeing how he presents faith as a gift from God that, paradoxically, can never be accepted by reason, no matter how diligently reason tries to "grasp" it.
17.
Kierkegaard's Paradox
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35.
Pluralisms—Religious and Secular
Enjoy a look at how some of today's most creative religious thinkers have approached one of their discipline's most provocative questions: How do you incorporate issues like pluralism, diversity, and tolerance when the religions you are studying contain claims of exclusive salvation or of being God's choice?
35.
Pluralisms—Religious and Secular
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18.
19th-Century Suspicion and Feuerbach
You are introduced to the work of Ludwig Feuerbach, one of the major 19th-century critics of Christianity. Unlike Enlightenment critics attacking religion's supposed irrationality, Feuerbach sought to "unmask" the way religion prevents us from grappling with the reality of life.
18.
19th-Century Suspicion and Feuerbach
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36.
Faith, Suspicion, and Modernity
In concluding the course, you address the unavoidable point that the religious life does involve making claims about the nature of reality. Explore what those claims might be and the directions in which reasonable common ground between skepticism and belief might lie.
36.
Faith, Suspicion, and Modernity
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36
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
Philosophy and the Modern Age
Preview the course, beginning with the scientific and social changes of the 17th through 19th centuries that forced all major philosophers to develop dramatically new views. Then see how the 20th century unleashed three diverging pathways for Western philosophers, each producing its own wave of this radically new thought.
1.
Philosophy and the Modern Age
|
19.
Rise of 20th-Century Philosophy—Phenomenology
Watch as Husserl tried to formulate a new ideal philosophy of meaning on the basis of a nonempiricist, holistic analysis of human experience. His solution changed all subsequent European philosophy, liberating the investigation of lived experience from empiricism, psychology, and natural science.
19.
Rise of 20th-Century Philosophy—Phenomenology
|
2.
Scholasticism and the Scientific Revolution
Grasp how the Scientific Revolution arrived in a world already reeling from religious and social upheaval, fragmenting the medieval Aristotelian-Christian view of the cosmos. Can philosophers discover a way to follow God and the new science at the same time?
2.
Scholasticism and the Scientific Revolution
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20.
Physics, Positivism, and Early Wittgenstein
Witness the logical positivists' reaction to the new physical view of the world offered by special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, and Hubble's discovery of the universe's expansion. They declared that reality is knowable only by science's "verifiable" constructions of sense data. As the young Wittgenstein wrote, beyond those limits we should be "silent."
20.
Physics, Positivism, and Early Wittgenstein
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3.
The Rationalism and Dualism of Descartes
Learn how Descartes forged the first and most influential solution. He posited a private self-consciousness, with its own innate ideas, as the foundation of knowledge, with reality fundamentally divided into both matter and mind (or soul). The former is the realm of science; the latter is that of religion, psychology, and ethics.
3.
The Rationalism and Dualism of Descartes
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21.
Emergence and Whitehead
Learn about both British Emergentism, which argued for a nonreductive metaphysics of science, and the work of Alfred North Whitehead, the one 20th-century philosopher to take up the 17th-century goal of a metaphysical system consistent with physics to explain the place of mind, values, and God.
21.
Emergence and Whitehead
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4.
Locke's Empiricism, Berkeley's Idealism
See how Locke's denial of innate ideas created the modern empiricist view of knowledge as based solely on experience, instigating centuries of empiricist-rationalist debate. Later, Berkeley inaugurated modern idealism with his conclusion that empiricism must deny matter's very existence; there are only minds, with experiences programmed by God.
4.
Locke's Empiricism, Berkeley's Idealism
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22.
Dewey's American Naturalism
Encounter the work of the most prominent American philosopher of the 20th century. Most famous as a philosopher of education, John Dewey called for a transformation of philosophy on pragmatic and naturalist principles and wrote in virtually every area of philosophy. To many Americans, Dewey was philosophy.
22.
Dewey's American Naturalism
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5.
Neo-Aristotelians—Spinoza and Leibniz
Follow the attempts of two thinkers to integrate religion, philosophy, and science without straying from Aristotelian foundations. For Spinoza, everything is one substance—God. For Leibniz, every substance has its own mental properties and "view" of the universe, with God binding all together.
5.
Neo-Aristotelians—Spinoza and Leibniz
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23.
Heidegger's Being and Time
Learn how one of the most important philosophical books of the 20th century created the basis for modern existentialism, as Martin Heidegger put Husserl together with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to forge a new kind of phenomenology that seeks the meaning of human existence.
23.
Heidegger's Being and Time
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6.
The Enlightenment and Rousseau
Watch the Enlightenment's self-conscious heralding of modernity, where science, freedom, and cosmopolitan education will mean progress in the face of superstition, authority, and tradition. The greatest dissenter is Rousseau, who argued that progress in art, science, and the economy yields no progress in morality or happiness.
6.
The Enlightenment and Rousseau
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24.
Existentialism and the Frankfurt School
Witness European philosophers exploring individual alienation in mass culture as the modern Western world swirls in the turmoil of World War II. The German Frankfurt school merged Marx with Freud to find domination in reason itself. The French combined existentialism with Marxism. And Heidegger—without apology then or later—joined the Nazi Party.
24.
Existentialism and the Frankfurt School
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7.
The Radical Skepticism of Hume
Watch Hume drive empiricism to the extreme of radical skepticism, dismissing all metaphysics as nonsense. If we only know through experience, all we know is experience, so science cannot rationally say that the sun will rise tomorrow or even that it probably will.
7.
The Radical Skepticism of Hume
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25.
Heidegger's Turn against Humanism
Watch Heidegger's later work take a new, decidedly anti-humanist direction. He called for a rejection of Western metaphysics—which expressed the triumph of technology and individualism dictating to Being—and instead asked that humans patiently "listen" to the call of Being.
25.
Heidegger's Turn against Humanism
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8.
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Learn how Kant tried to find an answer to Hume, without which neither science nor philosophy can claim general knowledge of reality. His reasoning changed philosophy forever as he argued that the human mind does not passively receive our experience of the world but actively constructs it from sensation.
8.
Kant's Copernican Revolution
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26.
Culture, Hermeneutics, and Structuralism
See culture and language seize a prime position in philosophical thought with Ernst Cassirer's neo-Kantian view of culture, Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics (amplifying Heidegger's claim that language is the "house of Being"), and Ferdinand de Saussure's and Claude Levi-Strauss's creation of structuralism.
26.
Culture, Hermeneutics, and Structuralism
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9.
Kant and the Religion of Reason
Kant's saving of science came at a price—the ability to know things as they appear but never "things in themselves." Reason, he argues, cannot prove—nor can science disprove—God, the soul, or free will. Kant protected faith from contradiction and created a different path for the German Enlightenment.
9.
Kant and the Religion of Reason
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27.
Wittgenstein's Turn to Ordinary Language
Plunge into perhaps the most influential work of 20th-century philosophy as Ludwig Witt-genstein rejected his own earlier positivism to declare that linguistic meaning is dictated by its use, not by logic but by the contextual social activities in which sentences operate. Philosophical problems are caused by ripping terms out of their practical context.
27.
Wittgenstein's Turn to Ordinary Language
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10.
The French Revolution and German Idealism
See how the French Revolution and Kant inspired German idealists like Fichte and Schelling to invent a new kind of philosophy, with spirit—hence, freedom—as the basis of nature, not the other way around.
10.
The French Revolution and German Idealism
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28.
Quine and the End of Positivism
See how Willard Van Orman Quine, who studied with the logical positivists, undermined their view. He showed that their distinction between truths of reason and truths of experience, borrowed from Kant, was a mistake.
28.
Quine and the End of Positivism
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11.
Hegel—The Last Great System
Grasp Hegel's synthesis of Fichte's idealism and Schelling's panentheism with world history as the story of God's coming to self-consciousness. We can follow the "dialectic" of partial, incomplete historical perspectives up to the perspective of the Whole, that is, of God.
11.
Hegel—The Last Great System
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29.
New Philosophies of Science
With the decline of positivism, see the appearance of new interpretations of scientific knowledge. Learn about Popper's rejection of the idea that science seeks to confirm its theories, Davidson's formulation of an alternative to reductionism, and Kuhn's provocative view of scientific revolutions.
29.
New Philosophies of Science
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12.
Hegel and the English Century
Watch how the Industrial Revolution, the rise of European imperialism, and the philosophy of Hegel inspired other thinkers—including Comte, Spencer, Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and, especially, Darwin and Marx—to create historical explanations for the development of mind and society.
12.
Hegel and the English Century
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30.
Derrida's Deconstruction of Philosophy
Learn about the most famous of the French postmodernists and his "deconstruction" of the history of Western philosophy. All writing (or sign-use, in general), Jacques Derrida asserted, must involve the pretense that the meanings of signs can be controlled, a pretense he vigorously denied.
30.
Derrida's Deconstruction of Philosophy
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13.
The Economic Revolution and Its Critic—Marx
The socially wrenching birth of industrial capitalism, with its massive human costs, provoked many critics, but the most influential was a young German follower of Hegel, Karl Marx. See how his ideas became the 20th century's greatest challenge to Western liberalism.
13.
The Economic Revolution and Its Critic—Marx
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31.
The Challenge of Postmodernism
Derrida's work and that of kindred French thinkers Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard created postmodernism. This movement's radical rejection of modern philosophy's central notions—and perhaps even philosophy itself—joined with a view of postmodern society as no longer requiring a "metanarrative" or foundational philosophy.
31.
The Challenge of Postmodernism
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14.
Kierkegaard's Critique of Reason
Kierkegaard remains the most radical philosophical critic of reason itself. Follow his rejection of Hegel and any attempt to "rationalize" the human condition. For Kierkegaard, the human spirit is subjected to fundamental choices that cannot be reconciled, particularly religious faith, which is intrinsically irrational and higher than reason.
14.
Kierkegaard's Critique of Reason
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32.
Rorty and the End of Philosophy
Sample the thinking of the most famous American contributor to philosophical postmodernism. Richard Rorty argued that the search for the foundations of "knowledge" —little more than whatever the verification procedures of society say it is—is a bankrupt enterprise. Traditional philosophy, according to Rorty, is well forgotten.
32.
Rorty and the End of Philosophy
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15.
Nietzsche's Critique of Morality and Truth
Meet the most violent critic of the Judeo-Christian and, to some extent, Greek values of Western civilization. Nietzsche declared that morality makes the individual sick. The modern decline of religion leaves only the "will to power" and the need for a new set of values. His deepest concern was what those values would be.
15.
Nietzsche's Critique of Morality and Truth
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33.
Rediscovering the Premodern
Learn how a series of 20th-century philosophers—including Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, and Alasdair MacIntyre—called for reincorporating premodern notions to supplement modernity. For if modern philosophy is indeed at a dead end, might not its departure from premodern thought be responsible?
33.
Rediscovering the Premodern
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16.
Freud, Weber, and the Mind of Modernity
Besides Hegel, Marx, and possibly Nietzsche, two other German-speaking authors created much of the background for analyzing the unique form of life evolving in the 20th century. Listen as Freud's and Weber's arguments that modern society will generate increasing discontent were taken up by later philosophers.
16.
Freud, Weber, and the Mind of Modernity
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34.
Pragmatic Realism—Reforming the Modern
See how pragmatism enjoyed a resurgence as a means of preserving the philosophical search for realist truth in the absence of foundationalism. Encounter a variety of attempts at nonfoundational epistemology, as thinkers like Habermas, Putnam, Margolis, and Campbell demonstrated this pragmatic renaissance.
34.
Pragmatic Realism—Reforming the Modern
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17.
Rise of 20th-Century Philosophy—Pragmatism
Watch as late 19th-century philosophy begins to fragment into the three subcultures that would characterize philosophy's next century: analytic, continental, and pragmatic. The last would become the indigenous American tradition, exemplified by its two major contributors, Charles Peirce and William James.
17.
Rise of 20th-Century Philosophy—Pragmatism
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35.
The Reemergence of Emergence
While various applications of pragmatism resurfaced in the theory of knowledge, there was also a noticeable return of the metaphysical doctrine of emergence. Witness this return not only in the work of philosophers of science but also in science itself, exemplified by the late 20th-century interest in "complexity."
35.
The Reemergence of Emergence
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18.
Rise of 20th-Century Philosophy—Analysis
Grasp how Frege's invention of the first new logic since Aristotle, combined with Russell's and Moore's attack on the dominant idealism of the age, led to a new approach, "analytic" or "Anglo-American" philosophy. It would become the dominant philosophical approach in all English-speaking countries.
18.
Rise of 20th-Century Philosophy—Analysis
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36.
Philosophy's Death Greatly Exaggerated
After the unprecedented philosophical radicalism of the 20th century, the question of philosophy's future still remains. Sample some of the most likely approaches by which philosophy might successfully integrate—and find common ground among—an increasingly complex array of human activities.
36.
Philosophy's Death Greatly Exaggerated
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