Theoria

4 Comments

1. Mikhail Emelianov wrote:

   first year seminar looks pretty interesting – isn’t it a bit tough for the incoming freshmen though? maybe they are smarter up there in Canada…

   Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 6:52 pm | Permalink
2. Craig wrote:

   When I was an undergrad, I did Nietzsche in first year at the same university in a history of philosophy lecture course. It wasn’t easy – obviously – but it was manageable. I wouldn’t do Hegel or Kant in first year… but Nietzsche and Freud seem alright. Don’t undergrads take philosophy in first year at all in the US? In addition my first year history of philosophy course, we also read classics of political theory in first year political science. And they’d likely get Marx, Weber and Durkheim in their first year sociology.

   What did you think was particularly hard?

   Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 10:42 pm | Permalink
3. Mikhail Emelianov wrote:

   I find it difficult to judge the texts these days because if I don’t think something is hard to understand I have a tendency to assume others will get it as well – I do like your course, I think for a freshmen seminar in the US, or at least in my school which is a private expensive university with some good level freshmen and a first-year seminar program as well, reading Foucault, Marx, Durkheim, Nietzsche and others would be considered a difficult course – I usually use the primary texts for the most part, but it’s always a struggle with the younger students who simply have no experience, in my view, with these kinds of texts.

   Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 6:09 pm | Permalink
4. Craig wrote:

   Yes, I agree, they will not have read anything like this in high school. I think most of them will also have extreme difficulties in communicating through writing. I hope the subject matter – rather visceral stuff – will help them get past the initial difficulty of the texts and keep them interested. Seriously: who doesn’t want to read about public executions? I know I do! I’ve taught Marx, Weber and Durkheim to second year students with a great deal of success and have taught Foucault to third year students (my Law and Regulation course is centered around Foucault). But, I do know that there are instructors who won’t teach stuff like Foucault until fourth year.

   Hopefully they will be no worse than the students in my first year cohort. In the “History of Philosophy” course I took, we read, among others, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Kant (Second, not First, Critique, however), Nietzsche and Mill. None are easy, but we got through it. The course is still offered and I have to imagine that the reading list hasn’t changed much.

   Thursday, August 7, 2008 at 10:49 am | Permalink

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