PHIL4211 · Philosophy

Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche: Art, Religion, and the Question of Meaning

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

The aim of this course is to explore G. W. F. Hegels, Sren Kierkegaards and Friedrich Nietzsches accounts of the human condition. All three philosophers grapple with human temporality and human limitations in singular ways. While Descartes and Kant bequeathed to them (and to us) a human subject divorced from itself and from knowledge of what is ultimately real, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche offer this alienated subject a panoply of provocative perspectives and therapies. In addition, each thinker takes up timeless questions regarding the meaning of suffering, the nature of beauty, and the significance of human history, culture and religiosity. In the concluding weeks of the semester, we read HeideggersThe Question Concerning Technologyas a way to both contextualize the work of Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and to get a glimpse of his own remarkable reframing of human subjectivity. Above all, we look forward to working with philosophers who were determined, above all else, to keep it real.