Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche

This course will investigate the works of three of the central philosophical and cultural critics of the nineteenth century. All of these thinkers revolted against the apotheosis of Reason that had occurred in the Enlightenment and that reached its culmination in the works of Hegel. We shall read Kierkegaard's Either/Or, Philosophical Fragments, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript; Marx's early essays criticizing Hegel, the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and other selections concentrating on Marx's philosophical views, not his economic analysis; and Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, The Use and Abuse of History, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (selections), and The Genealogy of Morals.