Welcome to Class!

Welcome to PHIL 315! This course will cover four major thinkers of 19th C. Philosophy by reading Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, selections from Marx's Marx/Engels Reader, Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. These seminal texts are quite challenging and will require considerable time and attention in order to grasp them fully. Therefore, I have set up this blog in order to provide a forum for further discussion and reflection outside of the classroom.

Why "Revolution and Evolution"? As we will soon see, the turn of the 19th C. was marked by dramatic social, political, and economic changes. The philosophies of the late Enlightenment (especially those of Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) set the stage for a radical rethinking of the nature and role of the state, the individual, Nature, freedom, autonomy, religion, ethics and Reason. There were (at least) two ways to explain all of these changes: either in revolutionary terms or in evolutionary terms. Which explanatory model one chose depended, of course, on a host of other philosophical assumptions. In our studies of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, we will see both models, sometimes overlapping one another in the same thinker's work. It is impossible to cover all of the significant philosophical movements of the 19th C. in one semester (which include German Idealism, Marxism, Pragmatism, Positivism, Utilitarianism, British Idealism, Transcendentalism, and the beginnings of what will later come to be known as Existentialism), so we will be forced to focus our attention somewhat. However, it is crucial to remember that revolutionary and evolutionary changes in thought and life were occurring throughout the world, and in a variety of modes.

Students in this course will be required to participate on this blog regularly. The requirements are as follows:
1. Each student must contribute one independent post every other week. Blog-posts should be no less than 400 words and must be well-edited and substantive. (Think of it as a short paper.) The "deadline" for submitting posts will be midnight on Sundays. Late posts will not be credited toward students' grades.
2. Each student must also contribute at least 2 comments every other week. The real "life" of a blog happens in its comments, so everyone should take the time to read and respond to classmates' contributions. The deadlines for submission of comments is the same as the deadline for posts.

Your blog contributions will be graded like any other writing assignment. Consequently, you should take care not to write too "informally," to edit your work before you submit it, and to respond to your commenters who challenge or question your claims. Unlike traditional "paper" assignments, blogs allow you to integrate links, videos, images and other hyper-media into your writing, so I encourage each of you to avail yourself of those opportunities. Also, please do not limit yourself to merely meeting the "required" number of posts and comments. Contribute whenever you have contributions to make!

Marx famously stated: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it." Whether by evolution or revolution, we will endeavor in this course to direct our interpretations toward bringing about change!