Download WKSP: Critics of “Civilization”

V57.0900.007
Critics of “Civilization”
Andrew Sartori
Since the eighteenth century, a persistent theme of political, social and philosophical
discourse has been the critique of “civilization,” both within Europe and beyond. How
has the object of this critique, “civilization” (a concept that itself only emerged in the
eighteenth century), been construed by its critics? With what alternatives or by what
standards have they judge its failings? To what extent does this strand of criticism
represent a continuous tradition, and to what extent should we locate specific critiques of
civilization in the particular contexts of their articulation? More generally, how can we
treat the critique of civilization as an object of historical investigation? Topics will
include enlightenment and counter-enlightenment, British cultural criticism, the
Kultur/Zivilisation distinction, and anti-colonialism.
Week 1
Introduction
Week 2
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality.
Week 3
Denis Diderot, “Paradox on Acting,” in Diderot’s Writings on the Theatre.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Letter to M. D’Alembert… Concerning the Effects of
Theatrical Entertainments on the Manners of Mankind.
Week 4
Johann Georg Hamann, “Letter to Christian Jacob Krauss” and “Metacritique on the
Purism of Reason,” in James Schmidt (ed.), What is Enlightenment?
Johann Gottfried Herder, “Yet Another Philosophy of History,” in Against Pure Reason.
Week 5
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, “Something Lessing Said,” in What is Enlightenment?
Friedrich Karl von Moser, “True and False Political Enlightenment,” in What is
Enlightenment?
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, selections.
Week 6
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Church and State, chapter 5.
Thomas Carlyle, “Signs of the Times.”
John Ruskin, “The Nature of Gothic,” Stones of Venice, vol. 2.
Week 7
Boris Jakim and Robert Bird (eds.), On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader.
Week 8
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, first and last chapters.
Week 9
Friedrich Nietzsche, “David Strauss,” in Untimely Meditations.
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Natural History of Morals” and “Peoples and Fatherlands,” in
Beyond Good and Evil.
Week 10
Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, An Islamic Response to Imperialism.
Week 11
Okakura Tenshin, Ideals of the East.
Shaku Soyen, “Buddhism and Oriental Culture,” in Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot.
Week 12
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents.
Week 13
Oswalt Spengler, Man and Technics.
Thomas Mann, Reflections of an Unpolitical Man.
Week 14
Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is within You, chapter 9.
Mohandas Kamachand Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, 26-38, 66-74, 156-164.
Week 15
Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 13-32, 57-61.
Leopold Senghor, The Foundations of Africanité, selections.