PHIL 224
Marx, Nietzsche and Freud Spring 2022
Division II Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

Each of the controversial and provocative figures whom we will read in this course have exerted a tremendous influence in our understandings of what it means to be a modern subject. Each questioned the emancipatory effect of reason and freedom as well as idealist accounts of moral progress in human history. Each identified the limits, whether historical or innate, of our human capacity to know ourselves and our world, and to live harmoniously with others. All three have had a profound influence on literature, social theory, and critical theories of the 20th and 21st centuries. In this tutorial, we will focus on questions concerning their distinctive methods, namely, historical materialism, genealogical critique, and psychoanalysis. We examine key concepts such as: capitalism, alienation, false consciousness, the death of God, nihilism, the unconscious, ego, id, superego, and the death drive.