This is the second part of a two-part intellectual history course. It can be taken on its own, or in conjunction with part one (PHIL235 Modernity and Critical Thought 1: Enlightenment and Political Change). In both, students are introduced to key names, ideas, and events within the history of modernity that are relevant to the study of philosophy, and to the humanities more broadly. The course places this material in critical relation to contemporary concerns.
Beginning where part one ended, this module addresses material from the mid-Nineteenth Century to the present, and it considers the development of differing forms of disenchantment with the promises of modernity. In what ways have Enlightenment ideals of reason, order, industry, and emancipation been associated with the disasters of the Twentieth Century; and in what ways might those promises have been intertwined with histories of racism and colonialism? How might those ideals, and the themes of critique and demystification associated with them, have informed the challenges to forms of normative authority that shaped the intellectual history of late modernity, and how might they in turn inform our current historical moment? In pursuing such questions, the module addresses figures and themes such as Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, feminism, alienation, ‘spectacle’ and consumer society, and the ‘postmodern’. By working through material such as this, the module endeavours to provide students with means of approaching some of the dilemmas of the present.
Assessment on this module has three components: assessed seminar participation (15%), a 2000-word essay (60%), and a 1000-word ‘wiki’ piece (25%).