The Catholic University of America

Department of History

HIST 642 Modern European Intellectual History, Part II

Spring, 2001

Prof. Jerry Z. Muller

M, 7:10-9

Gibbons B-12

 

                                                                      Office Hours:

                                                                      Gibbons B-35

                                                                      M 4:00-5:30pm

                                                                      and by appointment

                                                                       (202) 319-5484

                                                                      (301) 649-5544 (home)

                                e-mail: mullerj@cua.edu

            This course examines major trends, issues and great individual works within modern European intellectual history  by situating them in their historical contexts.  The weekly readings and discussions are focused on primary works, but attention is also given to the methodological approaches of the secondary readings.

Course Requirements

            A course of this sort depends upon the thoughtful participation of all students during each discussion. Students must come to class having not only read the assigned material, but having thought about it. One quarter of the grade will be based upon your class contributions.

            Grades will be based upon participation in class discussions, a paper, and a take-home final. The paper, twelve to fifteen pages in length, should explore an interpretive controversy involving one of the books, authors, or movements explored in the course. It is due no later than April 17. The questions for the final examination will be distributed during the last class, and your response of twelve to fifteen pages is due no later than May 3.
Course Schedule

 

M Jan.8: Introduction to the course

 

M Jan.15: No class (MLK Day)

 

M Jan.22 Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, What Nietzsche really said (Schocken, 2000 0-8052-4157-4)

and Nietzsche, “David Strauss, the confessor and writer,” in Untimely Meditations trans. Hollingdale (Cambridge 0-521-28927-0)

 

Recommended:

Key primary works:

Human, All Too Human

Beyond Good and Evil

Twilight of the Idols

The Anti-Christ

 

Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche ed. Christopher Middleton (1969, reprinted by Hackett 1996).

 

Secondary works:

Magnus, Bernd and Kathleen Higgins (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (1996), esp. the essays, “Nietzsche’s works and their themes,” “Nietzsche and the Judaeo-Christian tradition,” “Nietzsche’s alleged farewell: the premodern, modern, and postmodern Nietzsche”.

 

Megill, Allan, Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (California, 1985)

 

Brobjer, Thomas, “Nietzsche’s Reading and Private Library, 1885-1889,” Journal of the History of Ideas,, Vol.58, No.4 (1997), pp.663-680 Mallock and  Muller, y of Ideas-

 

Janz, Carl Paul, Friedrich Nietzsche Biographie (Munich, 1978), 3 volumes is the most thorough biography

 

Ross, Werner Der ängstliche Adler, (Munich,1999) is the most recent biography

 

M Jan.29  Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson (Cambridge 0-521-40610-2)

 

Secondary Works

Schacht, Richard (ed.) Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals (Berkeley, 1994)

M Feb.5   Steven Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990, (California), pp.1-271

M Feb.12 Freud,  Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1910)

and Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (3rd ed.)

 

Recommended:

Primary Works:

The Interpretation of Dreams

Civilization and Its Discontents

 

Secondary Works:

The Cambridge Companion to Freud ed. Jerome Neu

 

H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society,chapters 1,2,4.

 

Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988)

 

Frederick Crews (ed.) The Memory Wars: Freud’s Legacy in Dispute (New York, 1995)

 

M Feb.19 Lenin, What is to be Done (1902), pp.74-83, 118-130, 134-161, 173-203, 210-212, 237-239. ed. Service (Penguin 0-1401-81261)

 

Recommended:

Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1978)

 

Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 (New York, 1994),

 

  Andrzej Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom : The Rise and Fall of the Communist Utopia (Stanford, 1997)

 

H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society, chapters 3,5

 

M Feb.26 Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology,(1897),

pp.35-53; 145-216; 241-276; 296-392. (Free Press)

 

Recommended:

Primary Works:

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

 

Secondary Works:

Aron, Raymond, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, Vol. II;

 

Coser, Lewis, Masters of Sociological Thought, Second Ed. (1977);

 

LaCapra, Dominick,Emile Durkheim (Chicago, 1972)

 

Lukes, Steven, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study (1973)

 

M Mar.12 Weber on Capitalism, Charisma and Bureaucracy

Weber, Economy and Society, (put on reserve)

pp.956-1005 (Bureaucracy)

pp.1111-1157 (Charisma and Its Transformations)

 

  Recommended:

Primary Works:

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

 

Economy and Society

 

Political Writings ed. Lassman and Speirs (Cambridge 1994)

 

Secondary Works

Mommsen, Wolfgang, The Age of Bureacracy;

 

Hennis, Wilhelm, "Max Weber's Central Question," Economy and Society, Vol.12 (1983), pp.135-180; republished in Hennis, Max Weber. Essays in Reconstruction.

 

  Dirk Käsler, Max Weber: An Introduction to his Life and Work (1988). (Bibliography)

 

H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society
M. Mar.19 World War I and the Intellectuals

Stromberg, Roland,Redemption by War: The Intellectuals and 1914 (Lawrence, 1982)

Recommended:

H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society, chapter 9;

 

Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Harvard, 1979)

 

M Mar.26 Fascism and the Intellectuals

Jerry Muller, The Other God that Failed:  Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism   (Princeton, 1987), Intro., Chapters 1-3, 6-10.

Recommended: Zeev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton, 1994),

 

Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France (Princeton, 1986)

 

Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1984);

 

Richard Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (MIT, 1993)

 

M Apr.2 Communism and the Intellectuals:

Crossman (ed.) The God that Failed (1949), selections by Crossman, Koestler, Silone, Spender.

Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956 (California, 1992)

 

Recommended:

Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba (any edition), chapters 1-4, 9.

 

Raymond Aron, Memoirs

 

M Apr.9: No class: reschedule to Tu Apr. 17?

Liberalism Reformulated: Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty 1960) Part I

 

Recommended:

See guide in Muller, Conservatism  and Hayek web page, http://members.aol.com/gregransom/hayekpage.htm

 

John Gray, Hayek on Liberty, 2nd Edition
M Apr.23 Radicalism Reformulated

Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, Intro., pp.1-120, 218-259.

 

Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)

 

Recommended:

Primary Works

  Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (1955)

 

Secondary Works:

Alisdair Macintyre, Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic (1970)

 

Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 3 (Oxford, 1978);

 

H. Stuart Hughes, The Sea Change: The Migration of Social Thought, 1930-1965 (New York, 1975), ch.4;

 

Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (MIT, 1994)

 

Primary Works, Foucault:

Madness and Civilization (1961)

 

Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (1980) ed. C. Gordon;

 

Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984 (1988) ed. L. Kritzman

 

The History of Sexuality, three volumes (1976-84)

 

Secondary Works: Foucault

J. G. Merquior, Foucault (California, 1985)

 

David Hoy, Foucault: A Critical Reader (New York, 1986),esp. essay by Michael Walzer, “The Politics of Michel Foucault”;

 

James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (New York, 1993;

 

Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault (Harvard, 1991)

 

T May 3: Take-home exam due in Dr. Muller’s office by noon.
Reference Works

 

              Among the useful general reference works which you may want to consult for this course in the Reference Room of Mullen Library are:

Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

The New Palgrave (on the history of economic thought)

Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe

 

              Thoughtful guides to several of the thinkers we will be reading include:

 

Aron, Raymond, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, 2 Volumes

 

Coser, Lewis, Masters of Sociological Thought, Second Edition

 

Heilbroner, Robert L., The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the great Economic Thinkers, Sixth Edition

 

Strauss, Leo and Joseph Cropsey (ed.) History of Political Philosophy, Third Edition

 

Three particularly useful series are the Oxford Past Masters; Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought;and the Cambridge Companion series.