HIST-201 Philosophy of History
An introduction to the major issues in the analytical and substantive philosophy of history. It deals with the problems of understanding the past and the quest to find patterns in the past. We will pay a good deal of attention to the practical, historiographical implications of philosophical theories. Beginning with a variety of Enlightenment approaches to history, we will proceed roughly chronologically, covering topics such as positivism; professionalism; Hegel and the Young Hegelians; Marx; Nietzsche; idealism and historicism; the quest for grand patterns; the sociology of knowledge; explanation and causation; relationships to social sciences; and feminist and postmodern critiques of both methods and traditional narrative structures.
Standard Course (40)
Credits
1