German 463 "Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Conceptions of Culture"
(Undergraduate)
Description
This course introduces students to major intellectual trends in German-speaking countries over the last 150 years. The readings will concentrate on the notion of "culture" itself, how it is used and, in some cases, abused by thinkers attempting to come to grips with the world around them. All of the works / thinkers we will read have had a profound effect on subsequent political, social, and intellectual developments. Some important contemporaneous developments in the social sciences that influence conceptions of culture will also be considered. In the first portion of the course we will examine the rise of "materialism" as a challenge to the predominantly "idealist" conceptions of culture and history that had dominated German intellectual traditions. This debate takes place (largely) in an "internationalist" framework. We then move to discuss some specific uses of culture that become imbedded in the political and scientific discourses between German unification in 1871 and the abdication of the Kaiser in 1918. In the period from 1920-45 we turn to divergent ideas about progress and the effect it has on cultural/political developments: the problem of separating primitive and/or agrarian from modern societies will be paramount here. This sets up the final section of the course, in which we investigate the role of intellectuals in the period between the end of WWII and the reunification of Germany in 1990, as they try to rescue the notion of culture from the past and for the future.
Format
The class will meet twice a week. Each class session will contain a mixture of lecture, student presentations, and discussion. Readings, discussions and lectures will be conducted almost exclusively in German. Since intense concentration and active participation will be vital to success in this course, a break of 5-7 minutes will be taken roughly at the end of the first hour of each session.
Texts
The only required texts are a full-sized (not pocket) German-English dictionary, and the photocopied course reader [available only at SBX].
Requirements and Grade Calculation
Students will be required to:
- attend regularly and participate actively (15%): after the second unexcused absence, 5% of the final grade will be deducted per unexcused absence;
- present one 3-5 minute oral report: (10%): spoken, not read, this report will provide background information on an author or a topic to be discussed by the class at large, and may (but does not have to) form the basis of the paper;
- write a 4-6 page research paper (25%) on a topic of the student’s choice, approved by me;
- take one midterm (25%) and one final exam (25%).
Schedule
INTERNATIONAL CULTURE: Materialist and Idealist
March 31 Introduction
April 2 Marx "Thesen über Feuerbach"
April 7 Marx/Engels aus dem "Manifest der kommunistischen Partei"
April 9 Dilthey "Ein Traum"
April 14 Nietzsche "Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne"
April 16 " " " "
QUESTIONS OF CULTURE AND NATION IN THE KAISERREICH
April 21 Bismarck "Eröffnung des Kulturkampfes"
Wilhelm II "Thronrede 1914"
April 23 aus Weininger "Sex and Character"
April 28 Spengler aus dem "Untergang des Abendlandes"
April 30 MIDTERM
ASPECTS OF MODERNIST CULTURE
May 5 Simmel "Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben"
May 7 " " "
May 12 Freud aus dem "Unbehagen in der Kultur"
May 14 " "Notiz über den ‘Wunderblock’"
May 19 Moeller van der Bruck "Der politische Mensch"
Spengler "Vom Führertum"; "Vom Eigentum"
May 21 Walter Benjamin from "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit"
POST-WWII INTELLECTUALS AND CULTURE
May 26 Arendt "Besuch in Deutschland"
May 28 Habermas "Zur Entwicklung der Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften
in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland"
June 2 Kluge "Das Lesen des Textes wirklicher Verhältnisse"
June 4 Final Session -- PAPER DUE AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS
Exam Week: Monday, June 8 (9:30-11:18) FINAL EXAM