PSC 450 - Seminar on Modernity & Its Discontents

1 course unit

Does modernity have a future? Modern liberalism, socialism, and communism grew out of the Enlightenment faith in progress, reason, and emancipation, each promising an expansion of freedom and equality through the human mastery of nature. Yet the catastrophes of the twentieth century have revealed darker forces at work in the modern era: world wars, alienation, totalitarianism, genocide, environmental deterioration, and terrorism. This seminar considers those political and social critics who offer both a diagnosis of and a cure for modernity’s discontents. Thinkers may include Nietzsche, Marx, Henry Adams, Freud, Max Weber, Arendt, Marcuse, and Foucault.
For juniors and seniors only.
Prerequisite(s): PSC 201 Political Ideologies or PSC 260, 261 American Political Thought or PSC 262, 263 Utopia & Its Critics or any course in political philosophy offered in the Philosophy Department.
Meets general academic requirement W.