Subject Area: Philosophy

In this course you will examine various ways in which societies, communities and shared forms of life can be criticized or can criticize themselves. Can one society be better than another, and if so on what grounds? What plausible ways are there to judge some particular developments of social life or social relations as progress or regress? Is it possible to diagnose some forms of social or communal life as ‘pathological’? Does criticizing others always mean one is assuming to know more or know better than they do? Can social critique contribute to the betterment of societies or communities, and if so how? The themes discussed in this course may include: anomie, alienation, reification, capitalism, ideology, domination, totalitarianism, psychoanalysis, social pathologies, external and internal critique, progress. Thinkers that may be examined include Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Lukács, Weber, Adorno, Horkheimer, Foucault, and other seminal figures in 19th and 20th century critical social philosophy.