2020-21 Academic Catalog

Who am I? What kind of world do I live in? What kind of life is possible or desirable for me? While these questions have been part of philosophy since its inception, there may be particular epistemic and ethical dilemmas of knowing ourselves as modern and post-modern subjects. Both theoretical and practical challenges to self-knowledge have emerged in the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Psychoanalysis, sociology, and evolutionary science have made us question whether there is an essential self to be known and, if so, whether we could have access to it. Historical events, including the world wars and the increased industrialization, bureaucratization, and secularization of western societies have made reckoning with finitude and alienation central to any project of self-knowledge. In this course we will consider the challenges to self-knowledge posed by life in the modern world, and ‘authenticity’ and ‘irony’ as two prominent responses to this fundamental self-estrangement.