PHIL 106 - Philosophy & Contemporary Issues

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2025/26b: Alienation. What does it mean to feel or to be alienated? Wanting things just because other people do? Not being able to identify with our social and political institutions? Or does it mean the narrowing of our activities, becoming workers who carry out tiny parts of broader processes that we can’t see and that we can’t control? How do ideas of alienation and meaninglessness have to do with ways that social life is organized — with the capitalist economy, for one, but also with institutions like race and gender? This course traces different views of alienation and its critique that runs through Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marx, Lowe, Lukacs, and others. We also look at less conventional forms of alienation critique as part of our inquiry: fiction by Nella Larsen, and the film A Woman Under the Influence. Shivani Radhakrishnan.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS