Type of Credit: Partially Required
Credit(s)
Number of Students
This is not a traditional history course in which you would learn about a particular time and place in the past. Instead, we will examine the idea of ‘History’ itself, and more particularly the structure of historical time. There are many interrelated questions that we will try to disentangle. Does history have a structure? Is humanity moving through time in one direction? Are we becoming more rational? More technologically sophisticated? More morally righteous? Or simply more dangerous to ourselves and everything else in the universe? What drives our ‘progress’ if it really exists? Is it the accumulation of scientific knowledge or class struggle or the pursuit of our deeper psychological needs? And is there a telos, a final destination, an ‘End of History’ that we might someday reach? Philosophers, scientists, revolutionaries, and lunatics have been arguing about these questions for centuries and they are still being debated in our present. Many people have been willing to kill and to die for their vision of what History should be, and our goal in this course is to understand why. To this end, the course will trace many different ideas about History from the eighteenth century to the present by introducing you to the life and times of major thinkers and writers, and then by critically engaging with their ideas.
能力項目說明
The course will not advocate for any one vision of History, but by exploring how different people imagined a myriad of structures and purposes within the flow of historical time, you will gain a set of useful tools to think about the relationships between our own presents, pasts, and futures. By the end of the course you will have gained familiarity with a range of ideas and models that will help you to think more critically and more directly about where we are going as a species and why.
Besides these intellectual goals, the course will also give you an opportunity to develop your academic skills as a reader, writer, and debater through engagement with important texts and the expression of your own ideas in short answers, essays, and discussions.
Tentative Course Schedule (note that this schedule is not set in stone; inspiration could strike at any time)
2/26: Course Introduction
3/5: Giambattista Vico & the New Science
3/12: The Marquis de Condorcet & the Progress of the Human Mind
3/19: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel & the World Spirit
3/26: Karl Marx & Capital
4/2: [Intercollegiate Activities, No Class]
4/9: Friedrich Nietzsche & Morality
4/16: Guest Lecture, Dr. Sarah Barthélemy of UCLouvain, "Introducing Max Weber: History, Economy, Religion"
4/23: Midterm Examination
4/30: Julian Huxley & Eugenics
5/7: Hannah Arendt & Totalitarianism
5/14: Herbert Marcuse & One-Dimensional Man
5/21: Sports Day
5/28: Francis Fukuyama & the End of History
6/4: Ray Kurzweil & the Singularity
6/11: Final Examination
Midterm examination 期中考試: 30%
Final examination 期末考試: 40%
Discussion and response questions 討論與回應單: 30%
Examination Make-up Policy
If you need to miss an exam because of a legitimate reason (a medical appointment, class trip, family emergency, &c.), you should let your teaching assistant or me know in advance so an alternative time can be arranged for a make-up exam. Similarly, if you miss an exam because of an unforeseen emergency, you should contact us as soon as possible to discuss arranging a time for a make-up exam.
Attendance for Class Meetings and Discussion Sections
Attendance is required. You should complete the assigned readings prior to each class meeting. If you know you will miss a class meeting, you should let your teaching assistant or me know as soon as possible.
Weekly Response Questions
Every week you will answer two to three questions related to the assigned readings in one or two sentences. These questions will help you prepare for the discussion sections.
There is no required textbook for this course. There will be a 'further reading' list for each lecture that you can use to learn more about a particular topic that you are interested in.
The course readings for the discussion sections will be available online through Moodle.
| 書名 Book Title | 作者 Author | 出版年 Publish Year | 出版者 Publisher | ISBN | 館藏來源* | 備註 Note |
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