Contemporary Civilization

CC1102y

---

REQUIRED TEXTS

Contemporary Civilization Reader. Sixth Edition. (American Heritage)

Hume. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. (Hackett)

Rousseau. The Basic Political Writings. (Hackett)

Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. (Dover)

Kant. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. (Hackett)

Mill. On Liberty. (Hackett)

Smith. Wealth of Nations. (Hackett)

Marx. The Portable Karl Marx. (Penguin: Viking Portable)

Darwin. The Origin of Species. (Penguin)

DuBois. The Souls of Black Folk. (Dover)

Sřren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. (Princeton)

Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morality. (Cambridge)

Freud. Civilization and Its Discontents. (Norton)

De Beauvoir. The Second Sex. (Vintage)

Max Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Hayek. The Road to Serfdom. (Chicago)

These works are, or will soon be, available at the university bookstore, and on reserve in Butler Library. There will also be some additional readings, marked as “copies” on the syllabus, which will be placed on reserve in Butler under my name.

N.B. I reserve the right to make slight alterations in the readings, perhaps adding an article here, or dropping one somewhere else.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1. ATTENDANCE: The whole of CC is designed such that you all have the opportunity to meet and discuss the readings. If you fail to attend, you harm not only yourself but your classmates. For this reason, more than two unexcused absences will lower your grade. Also note that four unexcused absences are grounds for dropping you from the course.

2. PARTICIPATION: CC courses are discussions, not lectures. This means that your active and informed involvement in the class is crucial. You are expected to do the readings carefully and think about them before class, such that your participation in the discussion is intellectually stimulating. I expect everyone to come with at least three questions/comments on the readings for each session. These may be points with which you particularly agreed, with which you particularly disagreed, or points that made no sense to you. As the moderator, I reserve the right to call on you at any time and ask you to present one of your prepared comments.

3. PRESENTATIONS: Once during the semester, you will be expected to act as a sort of chairperson for the session. This entails an especially careful reading of the materials and the assumption of a more leading role in the class - both answering questions raised by the class and presenting topics for discussion.

4. PRÉCIS: You will be required to submit a written, 1- or 2-page précis for 10 of the 15 works above that are followed by a “[P]”. This should consist of (a) a paragraph describing the starting position and point of the author's argument and (b) an outline-format explication of the most important steps in that argument.

5. PAPERS: Two short (5-7pp.) papers will be assigned. I will present a set of possible paper topics at least two weeks before the due date. Similarly, after a few sessions, I will hand out a sheet explaining what I am looking for in your paper.

6. MIDTERM: The midterm will cover the material through Marx, and will be organized in the following manner: a) choose eight of twelve quotations, and tell me the author and work; b) choose four of those eight, and tell me in a paragraph the significance of the relevant quotation for the work in question and its broader significance; c) answer one of two essay questions.

7. FINAL: The final will have the same format as the midterm. Parts a) and b) will cover only materials read after the midterm, but the essay questions -- you will have to choose two out of four -- will be cumulative.

8. GRADE CALCULATION:

Class participation: 15%
Précis: 10%
Presentation: 5%
Papers: 20%
Midterm: 20%
Final: 30%9.

9. PREPARING FOR CLASS:

Most of the works we'll be reading are difficult. Therefore I would advise leaving a reasonably large amount of time for preparation. Some things (say, perhaps Kant) you may need to read more than one time. I have tried to keep the more difficult readings shorter where possible.

I strongly recommend marking the texts where important arguments are made, or where you violently agree or disagree with the author (or if he/she seems to be making no sense). Assuming you purchase them, thesebooks are your property - mark them up. When paper time comes, you may very well find that the questions and ideas you scribbled in the margins add up to a theme you might address. A good idea is to both mark the text for important or valuable passages, but also take notes on a separate pad of paper. Much of this you should be doing to prepare your précis. The goal of the précis is to get you to become consciously aware of the structure that arguments take, such that you can both begin to reproduce the logical structures themselves, and see them almost subconsciously in the materials you read for other classes. This is just advice -- develop your own system for learning the structure of a text and developing (and remembering) your responses to it.

After reading a text, however, your job isn't done. The only way to be prepared for class, and for this to be a lively and intellectually exciting experience, is to sit and think about the arguments both as you read them and after you have finished. Take the time to digest the work, think about what you agree with or disagree with, and why this is the case. From here, coming up with three things to say should be a piece of cake. Then all you have to do is show up, and talk about what's on your mind.

ASSIGNMENTS

21 January: Introduction.

26 January: Kant. “What is Enlightenment?” CC Reader. 73-9.

Michel Foucault. “What is Enlightenment?” In: Paul Rabinow, ed. The Foucault Reader. 32-50 Copies.

28 January: Hume. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. 13-88. [P]

2 February: Rousseau. “On the Social Contract.” In: The Basic Political Writings. 141-227. [P]

4 February: Rousseau. “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.” In: Basic Political Writings 25-82. [P]

9 February: Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. 6-78, 124-34, 145-54. [P]

11 February: Kant. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. 1-48. [P]

16 February: “Writings of the American Revolution.” CC Reader. 81-124.

18 February: “Readings from the French Revolution.” CC Reader. 125-61.

23 February: Mill. On Liberty. 1-73. [P]

25 February: Mill. On Liberty. 73-113, and The Subjugation of Women and Charles Taylor. “What's Wrong with Negative Liberty.” In: Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Copies.

2 March: Smith. Wealth of Nations. 1-13, 17-22, 30-57, 67-83.

4 March: Smith. Wealth of Nations. 116-22, 127-31, 166-205.

9 March: Marx. “From `On the Jewish Question,'” “From Economico-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” [P] “Theses on Feuerbach,” and “[Communism as the End of History].” In: The Portable Karl Marx. 96-114, 131-51, 155-8, 189-95.

11 March: Marx. “Manifesto of the Communist Party” and “From Value, Price and Profit.” [P] In: The Portable Karl Marx. 203-41, 394-432.

FIRST PAPER DUE.

16 March & 18 March: Spring Break. No meetings.

23 March: Midterm.

25 March: Darwin. The Origin of Species. 114-72, 435-60. [P]

30 March: Gobineau. “Selections from The Inequality of Human Races.” CC Reader. 163-206 and DuBois. The Souls of Black Folk. 1-35, 99-125.

1 April: Sřren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. Princeton: Princeton UP, ####. [P]

6 April: Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morality. 1-71. [P]

8 April: Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morality. 72-128. [P]

13 April: Freud. “The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis.” CC Reader. 207-36 and Lectures I, XVIII and XIX in Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. 17-28, 338-74. Copies.

15 April: Freud. Civilization and Its Discontents. [P]

20 April: De Beauvoir. The Second Sex. 267-327, 679-732. [P]

22 April: Max Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. [P]

27 April: Hayek. The Road To Serfdom. Selections TBA.

29 April: John Rawls. “Justice as Fairness.” In: A Theory of Justice. 3-53. Copies.

SECOND PAPER DUE.

4 May: Review?

8 May, 12:30-3:30: Final Exam.

Send mail to gv36@columbia.edu with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: Thursday, January 27, 2000

Web site designed by Max Voegler. ©1998 by Columbia University Dept. of History.