WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2022-2023       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Foundations of Critical Theory: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud

GRST 268
Fall 2022
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: COL 248
Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate, Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate

This course serves as an introduction to the main ideas of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, and their distinct yet similar techniques of interpretation. Michel Foucault once claimed that Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud "have changed the nature of the sign and modified the fashion in which the sign can in general be interpreted" -- which means that they changed the way in which we interpret and make sense of the world and of ourselves. Marx did so by leading his readers, in Capital, to "the hidden abode of production" where "the secret of profit-making must at last be laid bare;" Nietzsche did so by inviting his readers, in his Genealogy of Morality, to "go down and take a little look into the secret of how they fabricate ideals on earth;" Freud did so by teaching that we cannot know ourselves and are hence "not the master in our own house."
This course is designed to make critical theory and contemporary discourses in the humanities and social sciences more accessible by providing the modern historical and philosophical foundations for key critical concepts such as interpretation, subject/agency, history, origin, society and social power, value, modernity, capitalism, socialism, and religion/morality. We will explore some of the most influential writings of the respective authors in a comparative manner and, thus, come to a better understanding of the genesis of critical modern thinking.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA GRST
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (COL)(CSCT)(GRST-MN)(GRST)
Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74%

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459