Class 13: French Existentialism

“Enlightenment is totalitarian.”—Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual history. The c ...  Show more

“. . .totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within. In this sense it eliminates the distance between the rulers and the ruled. . .” –Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss existentialism. Imagine being back inside the bustling cafes on the Left Bank of Paris in the 1930s, cigarette smoke, strong coffee and the buzz of continental voices philosophising about human responsibility and freedom. This kind of talk gave utt ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss existentialism. Imagine being back inside the bustling cafes on the Left Bank of Paris in the 1930s, cigarette smoke, strong coffee and the buzz of continental voices philosophising about human responsibility and freedom. This kind of talk gave utt ...  Show more

Slavoj Žižek speaking about Hegel and Hegelian concepts of history and historicity, drawing not only on the works of Marxs Grundrisse and Jacques Lacan, but also on opera, Schoenbergs atonal revolution, the experience of impossibility, Freuds death drive, Steven King, … Continue ...  Show more

In this lecture, 11th in the 2017 series, I discuss the giants of existentialism, a philosophically-grounded psychological position positing (1) that psychopathology or mental illness/distress is built into Being itself and (2) that the adoption of responsibility through action i ...  Show more