Introduction to Course: Major Historical/Cultural/Intellectual/Aesthetic/Philosophical Movements

Drake 258
 

1) Discuss Full Course Description and Rubric

 

2) Outline Major Movements and Dates covered in this Course:

 

Pre-Enlightenment Europe/Renaissance (1450 – 1600)

(1600 - 1798)     The Enlightenment (or Neo-Classical, or Age of Reason)

(1798-1832)       Romanticism

(1839-1901)       Modernism and "isms": Victorianism, Impressionism, Symbolism, Colonialism, Marxism, Feminism, Alienation

(20th Century)     Post-Modernism and Existentialism

 

3) Note these “movements” and their dates are:
 

a)  somewhat arbitrary classifications; we use them for our convenience: they are easy to learn and test, but history and culture is fluid, complex, often contradictory etc. Be wary of oversimplification. -- I will grossly simplify much of what we cover in this class, spending five minutes on topics thousands of people spend their entire lives trying to understand. Consider this class a teaser, a sampler...consider me the pusher and this your first, free taste...go out and explore this stuff more on your own.
 

b) each continues to influence those that follow it

 

c) each continues to influence our current paradigms; the way we currently perceive our world: history as strata, layers, not a progressive line; or history as converging rivers, widening with each convergence and changing course yet still made up of the original elements.

 

4) Assumptions We'll Make In This Class:

 

a) All ideas have a genesis, starting point or, more accurately, an historical evolution; literature is the written history of those ideas and that evolution, and writing allows us to trace and understand that evolutionary history.

 

b) All ideas in your head got in there somehow: there are no innate ideas; ideas come from experience -- nearly always culturally bound (because even the way your parents raised you occurred within your given culture, language) (we'll compare this assumption to Platonic Idealism)

 

c) This is not church; no conversions to ideas necessary; we're interested in understanding ideas and their genesis, effects on culture etc etc. - you don't have to agree with any of the philosophers/authors etc we read, but you do need to understand:

    -- what they thought and wrote
    -- why they thought and wrote it
    -- the socio/eco/techno/poli etc context that formed the ideas
    -- the effect of their ideas on the the socio/eco/techno/poli etc
 

d) The value of this class is largely in connecting its contents to current debates, issues, values, ideas, assumptions etc. Each of us should leave this class with a far better understanding of where current ideas came from and what our own, personal and civic relationship to those ideas is.

 

Key Terms To Get Started:

1) "Civilization"

 

2) “Paradigm Shift”: a major change in the way a given culture or group conceives of and perceives reality.

 

3) "Philosophy" "A critical examination of reality characterized by rational inquiry that aims at the Truth for the sake of attaining wisdom." http://www.molloy.edu/academic/philosophy/sophia/what_is_philosophy_anyway.htm
 

4) “Aesthetic”: a concept or philosophy of what is or is not beautiful, artistic etc. and why; taste.  Also, how these concepts or philosophies represent our values: our epistemic, political, personal, religious, cultural etc. beliefs.  How what we believe to be "beautiful" or ugly or obscene relates to or represents what we believe to be true, or good, or bad, or moral or right, just, worthwhile etc. etc.

 

5) "Epistemology": a philosophy concerning how we figure out what is or is not True.  Will prayer lead to truth? Studying the Bible?  Mathematics and Logic? Your feelings?  Dreams? Art?  Scientific methodology?