Modern Philosophy (AP2164C)

Content

This unit examines major texts by philosophers of the early modern, Kantian, nineteenth-century and twentieth-century periods, who may include Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Cudworth, More, Locke, Newton, Clarke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and representative thinkers from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellectual movements of idealism, existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics, for example, Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger. The unit focuses on themes such as the relation of body and soul, the question of certain knowledge and the relationship between scientific, theological and common-sense world views. In addition, attention is given to the dispute between those philosophers engaged in sceptical or atheistic attacks on religion and those philosophers engaged with producing religion-conducive systems or defending religion.

Learning outcomes

Unit sequence

Two units of philosophy

Pedagogy

Lectures, seminars, tutorials. When taught online asynchronously or in seminar mode, the tutorial/seminar component may be replaced by guided reading exercises.

Indicative Bibliography

• Ameriks, Karl, ed. The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism. Second edition. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Ariew, Roger, and Eric Watkins, eds. Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources. 3rd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2019.
• Emmanuel, Steven M., ed. The Blackwell Guide to the Modern Philosophers: From Descartes to Nietzsche. Blackwell Philosophy Guides. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
• Guyer, Paul, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Hedley, Douglas, and Christian Hengstermann, eds. An Anthology of the Cambridge Platonists: Sources and Commentary. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2024.
• Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time: A Translation of “Sein und Zeit”. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Revised by Dennis J. Schmidt. State University of New York Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010.
• Husserl, Edmund. The Idea of Phenomenology. Collected Works. Vol. 8. Translated by Lee Hardy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1999.
• Mander, William J. British Idealism: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Shapiro, Lisa, Marcy P. Lascano, and Michel W. Pharand, eds. Early Modern Philosophy: An Anthology. Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2022.
• Smith, Kurt. This Is Modern Philosophy: An Introduction. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2023.

Assessment