Fordham College Honors Program
HPRH 2052 R01
Mon/Thurs 11:30AM-12:45PM Dealy Hall 102
CONTEMPORARY (MODERN) SOCIAL & POLITICAL THOUGHT:
Spring semester 2014
E. Doyle McCarthy, Dept. Sociology & Anthropology
(718) 817-3855 Dealy Hall 405A
Office hours: by appointment, please email me for apptmts.
The best way to reach me is by email
Course Description
This is a course that covers some of the principal works in social and political thought of the modern age, 18th through early 20th Century. One of the principal themes of the course is the “modern,” to what does it refer? What types of thinking and acting distinguish modern societies from societies of the medieval period? Why did these societies develop in the West and not somewhere else? What do we mean by the distinguishing characteristics of “modern man”? In what ways are modern philosophies to be distinguished by ancient and medieval philosophies? These are some of the questions taken up by the authors we will read in this course: Montesquieu on the physical and cultural conditions that give rise to particular types of governments; Kant on the distinctive features of “Enlightenment” thinking; Tocqueville on the types of societies and persons that live in modern democracies; Marx on the rise of modern economies and their effects; Weber on the origins of the modern capitalist “spirit” in the Reformation doctrines of the 16th Century.
Among the many distinguishing features of the “modern age” are its sciences. The course begins with 18thCentury Enlightenment science. It is not until the period of the Enlightenment in the 18th Century that the idea of a “science of man” or human science is born. This course traces the history of the human sciences from this period. Certain select themes of the 18th Century through the early 20th Century are studied and discussed: the modern idea of “society” as communities and organizations that change, grow, and develop; the search for an objective science of society; the use of reason and social science to advance individual freedom, humanity, and the social order; the origins and history of the idea of the “individual” and democracy.
The texts of the course introduce the reader to some of the principal viewpoints of those writers who first inquired into modern social and political organization. Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws is an Enlightenment treatise as well as a first work in political sociology. Works by Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, and Max Weber are read for their distinctive ideas concerning industrial democracies and for their different conceptions of modern social and political development and its future. Sigmund Freud’s Future of an Illusion (1927)and Civilization and its Discontents (1930) exemplify modernity’s discovery (or invention) of the unconscious and its use as a method of interpretation of human reason and consciousness as well as for interpreting the entire domain of human culture from art to science. Freud’s perspective also introduces something new into the intellectual perspectives of 20th Century modernism. Daniel Bell’s The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), republished with a 1996 Afterword by the author, traces the history of the culture of capitalism from its classical period to the late twentieth century where capitalism’s “victory” undermines its foundation in religious asceticism. Bell’s work opens up the distinctly late 20th Century inquiry into the fundamental changes in post-industrial societies, societies now portrayed as “post-modern.” The course closes with a brief look into the “postmodern”—beginning with a glance backward to Nietzsche’s “death of God”— and its undermining of modernist claims and perspectives.
Required Books available in bookstore and online (see ISBN numbers of required editions); students are required to use these editions for the seminar and weekly papers. These books are read in the order they are listed.
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels The Communist Manifesto (1848) with Introduction by
Gareth Stedman Jones. Penguinedition 1967.ISBN 0-140-44757-1
Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America Vol. 2 (1835/1990) Vintage Books.
ISBN 0-679-72826-0.#0-679-72826-0
Max Weber The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905/1992) Routledge.ISBN 0-415-25406-X
Sigmund Freud The Future of an Illusion (1927/1961) Norton.ISBN 0-393-00831-2
Civilization and its Discontents (1930/1961) Norton.ISBN 0-393-30158-3
Daniel Bell The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism1996 anniversary edition,
BasicBooks.ISBN 0-465-01499-2
Additional Required Readings (copies provided for the student; some are on electronic reserve)
Selections from Montesquieu The Spirit of Laws. (1748), edited by Anne Cohler et al.
Cambridge, 1989.
Peter Gay The Enlightenment: An Interpretation.
Immanuel Kant “What is Enlightenment?” (1784)
Michel Foucault “What is Enlightenment?” (1984)
Karl Marx “Wage Labor and Capital” (1847)
Immanuel Wallerstein “The End of What Modernity?” (1995)
Friedrich Nietzsche on “God is dead” (The Gay Science section 125; Prologue of Thus Spoke Zarathustra) (1882)
Jean-François Lyotard The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press ([1979] 1984), a selection: pp. 37-41.
READINGS for the opening weeks of seminar: 2014
January 13, 2014 first class:
What are the meanings of “modern” society? post-modern society?
Part I. What is Enlightenment?
- Mon Jan 13-16:Kant’s 1784 essay (and the editor’s Introduction),
copy provided.
Monday Jan 20. no class Martin Luther King holiday
- Thurs Jan 23.Peter Gay 1973 Introduction to The Enlightenment,
copy provided.
1stweekly paper (1-2 typed double-spaced pages) is due on the 2ndThursday of this class, January 23.
Further assigned readings on the Enlightenment
C. Mon Jan 27-Thurs Jan 30: Montesquieu The Spirit of the Laws Foreword, Preface, and Books 1-3, copies provided: from Montesquieu The Spirit of Laws. (1748), edited by Anne Cohler et al. Cambridge, 1989. Monday’s seminar is a discussion of the Montesquieu text; on Thursday we conclude the Montesquieu seminar introducing the next set of readings, 18th C. slavery essays.
D. Mon Feb 2.18th centuryphilosophes’ readings on human slavery
1. Intro. By Peter Gay, Vol. II on the philosophes’ views on slavery including,
2. August Ludwig von Schlőzer, Neurjahrs-Geschenk aus Jamaika (1780);
3. James Boswell Life of Johnson (1777);
4. Montesquieu Spirit of the Laws (1748) Book 15, Chs1-9 On the Laws of Civil Slavery
5. The contemporary historian David Brion Davis introduction to “The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture.”
We conclude the seminar, introducing for the next meeting Foucault’s essay.
E. Thurs Feb 6. Michel Foucault (1984) “What is Enlightenment?” a contemporary commentary on the Kant essay by the same title.
This concludes the opening seminar meetings on Enlightenment.
Karl Marx, historical materialism is born and a manifesto is written
Mon Feb 10- Thurs Feb 13. Introductory materials of TCM and the English text.
Marx, a selection of readings, “Wage Labor & Capital” (1849)
“A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1859)
Monday Feb. 17th holiday for Presidents’ Day.
Tuesday Feb. 18th we meet for seminar with your concluding remarks on reading Marx.
Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy
Thurs Feb 20. From this point on the seminar will follow the order of the required books listed above and described briefly below.
PrincipalTexts Studied
Montesquieu (1689-1755) The Spirit of Laws (1748) a selection.
Montesquieu has been described as the most influential writer of the 18th Century. Laws was one of the most popular books of the century. It was also a book brought under severe scrutiny from churchmen (Jansenists and Jesuits alike) and monarchists; the book was Indexed in 1751. In its Preface, Montesquieu claims to have drawn his principles from facts—the nature of things—rather than from prejudice; its goal, in part, was to enlighten people concerning their prejudices.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848).
This is a landmark text, a critique of modern bourgeois society, a political treatise summoning the industrial workers of industrial capitalism to rise up and revolt and to throw off their shackles. It contains all of Marx’s oppositions, the elements in his “dialectic”—the “contradictions” that will lead to revolution: especially the continual change and creation of modernism and its oppressive forces of horror and destruction; the life-giving impetus of each person bound to the process of creative labor or praxis and the capacity of the inanimate “forces of production” to alienate and destroy all that is life-giving. The Manifesto contains some of the great myths of modern life—alienation and creative change, the continual struggle of material life for possession of the modern soul.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) Democracy in America Vol. 2. (1835)
Tocqueville classic treatise is an original statement about America as well as the “democratic revolution” of the 19th Century. The work gives us an image of democracy, its inclinations, character, prejudices, and passions. The book is written “…to learn what we have to fear or to hope from [democracy’s] progress.”
Max Weber (1864-1920) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)
Weber’s challenge to Marxist method and his own distinct contribution to German “cultural sociology,” include this brilliant analysis of the ideational roots of capitalist economic organization in the Reformation doctrines of Martin Luther and John Calvin and their 17th Century heirs. He argues for the “elective affinity” of these doctrines regarding salvation and the “style of life” necessary for the building up of capitalism and its commercial and this-worldly ethos.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1930) The Future of an Illusion (1927)
and Civilization and its Discontents (1930)
Civilization…is Freud’s grimmest book. In it he argues that a growing sense of guilt is the necessary force of civilized humanity. Without guilt, humanity’s aggressive and egotistical self-interest threatens to undo and overcome the human condition. In Future of an Illusion, Freud was more hopeful—hopeful that Enlightenment Reason could prevail, that human beings could renounce illusions, accept reality, and turn to science to understand their condition and their fate. Both books are “enlightened” treatises—one a dark vision, another a hopeful one—by a modernist believer in science as the hope of humankind.
Daniel Bell The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976; anniversary edition, 1996)
Bell is considered one of the foremost commentators of 20th Century capitalism. This volume and his earlier The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, identified the important ways that industrial capitalism changes during the post-World War II period with the growth of the service sector, consumerism, and the extension of global capitalism. Bell is a critic of postmodernism and …Contradictions can be read as a moral treatise on the rise of a culture of hedonism—a culture inimical to the ascetic culture of classical capitalism. It is also a book by a thinker and an aesthete, one with a mastery of fields ranging from art and aesthetics to politics and sociology.
Course Requirements
Let’s review these requirements and tell me what you think about them. Early in the class I will consider making changes in the distributions of points, etc. Will these requirements facilitate your readings, writings, and discussions?
Students will please check your email regularly in this class so that I can send you messages and readings on a regular basis. You are also free to email me at any time with questions.
20 pts of the final grade will be based on attendance,weekly seminar preparation and participation.
Attendance at each of the seminar classes is required. Please let me know by email (so I have a record) if you have to miss class.
Students are expected to come with their readings or texts in hand, having read them and prepared to discuss the readings at each class.
Students who do not regularly attend and participate in the seminar discussions cannot receive a grade of A or A- in this course.
15 pts midterm: short essays with choice on the works read up to and including Tocqueville, Part 1 of this course.
15 ptsfinal exam: Mon May 12 9:30 amshort essays with choice on the works read in Part 2 of the course.
50 pts of the grade will be based on weekly 1-2 page (typed, double-spaced) response papers on the readings, due in class each week and based on a close readingof the week, assigned edition only of the book.
Please keep these in a single folder and hand in the folder with all your previous papers, week by week. These are not graded; you receive full credit on your weekly work if you keep your paper folder current; you will lose points only if your papers are not completed each week or if they do not show any or minimal evidence of the readings. I will try to make it clear in my comments on your papers, how well you are doing with your weekly papers. Please keep in mind that very well-prepared weekly papers over the semester can serve to upgrade your final grade (I mark these “excellent,”)
On grading: In calculating the final course grade, particularly fine work in the weekly seminars and/or the weekly papers can help me to discriminate B+, A-, and A. Students receiving an A in this course have met the standard of “excellent” in papers, exams, and seminar.
NOTE: The sophomore Honors students and faculty will attend the Met Opera on Wed. March 26, 7:30-10:25 pm to see Puccini’s La Boheme.
Longer paper option in March-April 2014
These dates are tentative and depend on the progress of the seminars and readings.
You may choose to write a 5-page paper (instead of a 1-2 pg. paper) on Max Weber or Daniel Bell; if you do this, you only write 1 paper instead of 2 for those 2 weeks of assigned papers.
March 17 and 21 SPRING Break
March 24Mclasses resume
Intro to Max Weber (1864-1920) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905).
March 27 ThMax Weber Part I, short paper #1 Weber due
March 31 MMax Weber cont., short paper #2 Weber due
April 3 Th conclusion to Max Weber, assigned reading for next class, Nietzsche.
April 7 MFriedrich Nietzsche on “God is dead” (The Gay Science section 125; Prologue of Thus Spoke Zarathustra), everyone writes a paper on Nietzsche, due next class.
April 10 Thconcluding Nietzsche, papers due today.
April 14 MSigmund Freud The Future of an Illusion (1927)
April 17 ThEaster recess Th April 17-Mon April 21
April 22 MSigmund Freud Civilization & Its Discontents (1930), concluding Freud, papers due on Freud, everyone.
April 22
MIntro to Daniel Bell (1976/1996) The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism.
Reading: Foreword, Preface, Part One.
April 25 Thclass on Bell, Part Two., short paper #1 Bell, due.
April 29 MBell, conclusion.
May 2 ThLast class, short papers #2 on Bell due.
Mon May 12 final exam 930-1130am
Spring 2014
Jan. 2 / Thurs. / University ReopensJan. 13 / Mon. / Classes begin following a Monday academic schedule; Academic Advising 2:30-4:00 in Department/Program Offices
for Majors; in Keating 302 for others
Jan. 20 / Mon. / Martin Luther King, Jr. Day - University Closed
Jan. 21 / Tues. / Deadline for Add/Drop of courses; last day for program change
Jan. 24 / Fri. / Deadline for removal ofINC, ABS, NGR grades from Fall 2013
Jan. 31 / Fri. / Last day of Attendance Reports to be submitted by all instructors (Round 1)
Feb. 5 / Wed. / Deadline to submit Candidate for Degree cards (May 2014 and August 2014 Graduates)
Feb. 7 / Fri. / Arts and Sciences Faculty Day
Feb. 17 / Mon. / President's Day - University Closed
Feb. 18 / Tues. / Classes resume following a Monday academic schedule
Feb. 20-27 / Thurs.-Thurs. / Midterm Examinations
Feb. 21 / Fri. / Last day for designating a course Pass/Fail
Mar. 4 / Tues. / Mid-semester evaluations for all students due
Mar. 17-23 / Mon.- Sun. / Spring Recess - No Classes; University Open
Mar. 24 / Mon. / Classes resume following a Monday academic schedule
Mar. 25 / Tue. / Last day to withdraw from a class without incurring a WF
Apr. 1 / Tue. / Last day of Attendance Reports to be submitted by all instructors (Round 2)
Apr. 17-21 / Thurs.- Mon. / Easter Recess - University Closed
Apr. 22 / Tues. / Classes resume following a Tuesday academic schedule
May 1 / Thurs. / Last day of Classes
May 2-5 / Fri.- Mon. / Reading Days
May 6-13 / Tues.- Tues. / Final Examinations
May 15 / Thurs. / Encaenia (Senior Awards Ceremony)
May 16 / Fri. / Baccalaureate Mass
May 17 / Sat. / University Commencement
May 26 / Mon. / Memorial Day - University Closed
Jun. 13 / Fri. / Deadline for removal of INC, ABS, NGR grades from Spring 2014 semester
Selected secondary sources for the course include:
Raymond Aaron Main Currents in Sociological Thought Vols. I & II.
Jeffrey Alexander & Steven Seidman Culture & Society: Contemporary Debates (1990)
Louis Althusser Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx (1959)
______. For Marx. (1969) (1969)
Hannah Arendt The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1958).
R.G. Collingwood The Idea of History. New York: OxfordUniversity Press (1956)
Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1989)
Norbert Elias The Civilizing Process. (1978)
Peter Gay The Enlightenment: An Interpretation
Vol. I: The Rise of Modern Paganism (1966)
Vol II: The Science of Freedom (1969)
Peter Gay Reading Freud: Explorations & Entertainments (1990).
Anthony Giddens Capitalism & Modern Social Theory (1971)
Robert Heilbroner The Worldly Philosophers (1972)
H. Stuart Hughes Consciousness & Society: The Reorientation of European
Social Thought 1890-1930. (1958)
Mark Hulling Montesquieu and the Old Regime (1976)
Robert Nisbet The Social Philosophers (1973)
Marshall Sahlins Culture & Practical Reason. (1976)
Edward W. Said Orientalism. (1978)
J.B. Schneewind The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy
New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998.
Steven Seidman and David G. Wagner Postmodernism & Social Theory (1992)
Quentin Skinner The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (1985)
Charles Taylor Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)
A Secular Age (2007)
Immanuel Wallerstein After Liberalism (1995)
Hayden White Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973)
Raymond Williams Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture & Society (1983 edition)
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