Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0284 - Kant, Hegel, Marx

Immanuel Kant revolutionized philosophy by arguing that human knowledge does not grasp the world as it really is, but only the world as it corresponds to the human mind. Kant's great successor, G.W.F. Hegel, pushed this idea further, attempting to show that absolute reality is essentially ideal, mental, or spiritual. Though profoundly influenced by Hegel, Karl Marx emphatically rejected Hegel's idealism, arguing that the history of the world is not the history of ideas but of class struggle. In this course, we will closely read texts by these three thinkers and examine their conceptions of knowledge, reality, history, and freedom.

Writing and Research Students are expected to spend approximately 6 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.