Week 1:

Lecture : The concept of Modernity

Preparatory reading:

• • Friedrich Schiller, Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung, Brief 6 (extract)
  • Questions on Schiller's Briefe

Karl Marx and the critique of capitalist modernity

Week 2: 

Lecture: Marx and the rise of industrial society

Seminar: The concept of alienation

• • Karl Marx: Ökonomisch-Philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844 (extracts) - part 1
  • [Translation here]
  • Questions week 2 and 3

Week 3:

Seminar: The individual as social being & ways of being in the world

• Karl Marx: Ökonomisch-Philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844 (extracts, link see above) - part 2

 

Week 4:

Seminar: Marx's view of the dynamic of modernity

• • Karl Marx: Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (extract)
  • [Translation here]
  • Karl Marx: Das Kapital, vol. 1 (extract)
  • [Translation here]
  • Questions week 4

Friedrich Nietzsche and the critique of Christian morality

Week 5:

Lecture: Nietzsche's aristocratic radicalism

Seminar: Philosophy of the Übermensch

• • Nietzsche on morality and modernity (extracts)
  • Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra (extracts)
  • Questions week 5

Week 6: Reading week

Week 7:

Seminar: The genesis of morality and the subject

• • Nietzsche: Zur Genealogie der Moral (extracts)
  • Questions week 7

Georg Simmel and the phenomenology of urban life

Week 8:

Lecture: Georg Simmel's sociology

Seminar: Man in the metropolis

• • Simmel: 'Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben'
  • Questions week 8

Sigmund Freud's theory of civilisation and its discontents

Week 9:

Lecture: Freud's model of the psyche

Seminar:

• • Freud: Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, Frankfurt: Fischer, 2009 - PART 1
  • Questions week 9

Week 10: 

Seminar: Unhappiness in Civilisation

• • Freud: Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, Frankfurt: Fischer, 2009 - PART 2
  • Questions week 10

Essay workshop: Recording Part 1 (H2.44) & Part 2 (H2.02)

(first 10 mins or so are a discussion of the module feedback and follow-on questions)

PLEASE NOTE: Slight changes to this programme are possible!

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Reading list and extracts for download: Click here