HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

6 ECTS credits

This course is a survey of the significant thinkers, movements, and ideas in Western philosophy from Ancient Greece until today, with special attention paid to the historical unfolding of significant issues in philosophical investigation. The course will cover major thinkers and theories including Socrates and the nature of philosophy; Plato's metaphysics and politics; Aristotle and the relation between mind and nature; Aquinas’s questioning of the existence of God; Bacon and the rise of modern science; Descartes’ skepticism and mind-body dualism; Hobbes and materialism and politics; Kant and the Copernican revolution in philosophy; social contract theory (including Locke and Rawls); Marx's theory of alienation; Nietzsche and the will to power; Heidegger and the question of Being; Sartre and existentialism; and twentieth-century pragmatism.