Th Century Continental Philosophy

This course offers an introduction to and overview of some of the most important philosophical currents of European philosophy in the 20th century. Its goal will be to help students understand the key claims, strengths, weaknesses, and assumptions of central areas of European thought, especially phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, structuralism, continental feminism, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Through a combination of close reading and textual analysis, we will study how thinkers from different currents in European philosophy attempt to resolve the problems they think plague their predecessors, and how they propose to move beyond them. Some topics and questions to be explored include the relation between perception, thought, and language; the philosophical importance of history; the limits of human reason and knowledge; what embodiment can tell us about experience; the role of ideology and power in the formation of human knowledge, etc.