WORLD VIEWS
philosophical movements of the 20th and 21st centuries
for  MA in International Relations  &  MA in Political Communication
at  Dublin City University
taught by  Dr Helena Sheehan  in  School of Communications
LECTURESfemale thinker
week 1  2000         overview of course
                   the big questions / basic philosophies/ root metaphors
                                    idealism v materialism   holism v atomism   essentialism v historicism
                           philosophies of history
                                     grand narratives: past & present
                           integrating intellectual history & autobiography
                                    course diaries
some ???  questions   ???  to be explored in the course of these lectures > > >
timeline of western philosophy (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

week 2      modernity / modernism multimedia presentation on modern philosophy
                      the making of the modern mind
                             capitalism, protestantism & the scientific revolution
                     the legacy of the enlightenment
                              rationalism v empiricism
                              anti-enlightenment reaction: romanticism
                             liberalism v conservatism
                   timeline of modern philosophy
                     evolutionary ideas: historicism / naturalism

week 3      empiricism; anglo-american philosophical traditions
                    positivism / logical positivism / neo-positivism / analytic philosophy
                    pragmatism / radical empiricism

week 4        existentialism / phenomenology / varieties of continental philosophy

    Camus "The Myth of Sisyphus"     to read the text, click  here

slides on existentialism
week 5 multimedia presentation of marxism
marxist theory 
politics & philosophy in the socialist movement     text: The Fate of Marxism

week 6      experiments in the relationship of world view & social order

     marxism in power (1)

online reading: October Revolution: early dilemmas and debates
                   Ideas and purges: soviet intellectual life and the 5 year plans
                                                             Lysenko and Lysenkoism
                  The comintern and the intellectuals
                  The dissolution and disillusion of the Comintern
                                                           Bernal  / Haldane / Caudwell

week 7              marxism in power (2)    case studies 2 & 3: politics & philosophy in the GDR & Yugoslavia

week 8  postmodernism
slides on postmodernism week 9     end-of-ideology / end-of-history theories
                 slides on end-of-history and grand narratives
                        text  grand narratives then & now: can we still conceptualise history ?
                 the future of politics & philosophy
                                             writing grand narratives ?
                                             constructing world views ?

week 10    the western canon and the rise of the repressed: class, race, gender & knowledge
slides on the rise of the repressed
                       Brecht  "questions from a worker who reads"
                        the pc wars, the culture wars, the science wars
                        feminist epistemolgy ?

week 11     eurocentrism and its critics: african alternatives
                        universalism and multiculturalism

week 12     contemporary ideological debates
                   philosophy and international relations theory and practice
                   review of course

course diaries due at end of week 12