2000-01 Bulletin Entry for:

Objectives

Santayana put it well: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." To understand the significance of our beliefs and commitments--even to understand the significance of the questions and problems that beset us--we need to trace their sources and their history. Because ideas are expressed in social and political institutions as well as in philosophical, scientific, religious, and literary works, the program in the History of Ideas (HOID) is distinguished by its multidisciplinary approach. Since political structures and institutions are themselves articulated in vigorous intellectual debates, we need to understand the ideas that have formed and that continue to form them. HOID proposes to provide students with the historical background of the issues and values that have shaped their interests. It is intended to provide students with the skills and the knowledge, the guidance and the freedom to construct a focused and rigorous course of study, one that explores the historical transformation of a set of ideas and institutions across several traditional disciplines.

Students who successfully fulfill the requirements of the program will receive a certificate in the History of Ideas; their participation will be listed in their University transcripts.

How to Become a Program Member

Students may apply to the program in the History of Ideas any time before the end of their junior year. They are strongly encouraged to consult with the advisor in their primary concentration as well as with the director of the Program.

Committee

(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

(Fine Arts)

(American Studies)

(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

(English and American Literature)

(American Studies)

(Germanic and Slavic Languages)

(Sociology)

(English and American Literature)

(Legal and American Studies)

(Romance and Comparative Literature)

(English)

(Philosophy)

(History)

(Classical Studies)

(Music)

(English and American Literature)

(Romance and Comparative Literature)

(Sociology and Women's Studies)

(Politics and Sociology)

(Physics)

(History)

Faculty

History of Ideas.

Requirements for the Program

Students will work with the HOID advisor to form a plan of study that draws upon and develops their particular interests. Such a program might trace the history of a particular theme, problem, or tradition (e.g. Platonism: or the idea of revolution in politics, science, or the arts) or it might trace the mutual influence of distinctive approaches to a subject.

A. Students must have taken at least one course in each of the following areas:

1. Literature and the arts.

2. History, Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, and philosophy.

3. Social sciences.

B. Students must take at least five courses whose substantive theme falls within the history of ideas, as determined by the HOID advisor. These courses must meet the following distribution requirements:

1. At least two courses within the field of their primary concentration.

2. One course in a related field.

3. HOID 127a (Seminar in the History of Ideas: Case Studies, the topic varies annually).

Students are strongly encouraged to construct individual curricular programs and to include areas of study that are not presently listed (e.g., biology, chemistry, environmental studies, mathematics, physics). Since courses and faculty interests vary from year to year, the list of courses recommended for the program will change annually.

Members in the program are invited to participate in the History of Ideas Student Forum. The Forum provides the opportunity to present a problem or issue for discussion. Working individually or in groups, students propose a discussion topic and a list of readings.

Students are encouraged, but not required, to present a senior thesis. They may register for HOID 98a or b (Independent Study) to prepare their thesis.

Courses of Instruction

Usually offered every year.

Staff

Usually offered every year.

Staff

(100-199) Courses for Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

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Devoted to tracing the major issues of early Western ethics: Is there a general conception of human nature and the human good? What is the relation between pleasure, virtue, and happiness? What are the conditions of responsible agency? What distinguishes voluntary from non-voluntary actions? What is the relationship between ethics and politics, between "local" and "universal" ethical norms? Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Rorty

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We trace the history of negative ethics, tracking transformations in conceptions of immorality: prohibitions of pollution and impurity, sin, vice, evil, malevolence, waywardness, outrageousness, incivility, criminality, and psychological pathology. What are sources of immorality? What marks a state of character as vile or despicable? Who judges? Usually offered in odd years.

Ms. Rorty

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Brandeis faculty present case studies in the history of ideas as they affect the current agenda of their research agenda. Topics vary annually. Past topics have included conceptions of liberty and choice; conceptions of social progress; the idea of the good society; varieties of evil. Usually offered every year.

Ms. Rorty

Conceptions of public, political liberty affect ideas of individual "free will" and vice versa. We trace the history of the mutual influence of arguments for political/social liberty and those for the "inner freedom" of individual conscience. Readings range from Sophocles and Thucydides to Isaiah Berlin and include selections from Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, Rousseau, Kant, Jefferson, Constitutional Amendments, Mill, Dostoyevsky, Rawls. Usually offered in even years.

Ms. Rorty

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The history of the aims, roles, and styles of philosophy: dialogues (Plato), investigations (Aristotle), letters (Cicero), poetry (Lucretius), spiritual and intellectual autobiography (Augustine, Rousseau), polemical articles (Aquinas), essays (Bacon and Hume), political programs (Locke, Bentham, Mill), and systematic treatises (Descartes, Kant). Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2000.

Ms. Rorty

Elective Courses

The following is a partial list of approved program courses. Other courses may be elected with the approval of the program advisor. The courses approved for the program are not all given in any one year and students are advised to consult the Course Schedule for each semester.

History, Time, and Tradition

The Nature of Human Nature

Topics in Greek and Roman History

Classical Mythology

The Rise and Fall of Humanism

Comparative Economic Systems

Law and Economics

Nineteenth-Century Survey

Romanticism I: Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge

Rights: Theory and Rhetoric

Theories of the Self

Reason and Ridicule: The Literature of Britain in the Enlightenment

History of Literary Criticism

Eighteenth-Century Novel

Art and the Origins of Europe

Renaissance Art in Northern Europe

The Renaissance

The French Enlightenment

Topics in French Fiction

French Literature and Painting

German Enlightenment and Classicism

A History of Death

The Persistence of Tradition: As Introduction to Japanese Poetry, Drama, Fiction, and Film

East Asia in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)

The Scientific Revolution

European Thought and Culture: Marlowe to Mill

European Thought and Culture since Darwin

Seminar on Traditional Chinese Thought

Community and Alienation: Social Theory from Hegel to Freud

Romantic and Existentialist Political Thought

The Western Canon

Modes of Narrative: Epic and Romance

The Western Tradition as Seen through Chamber Music

Music and Culture: From Romanticism to the Modern Era

The Philosophy of Jewish Law

Modern History of East European Jewry

Ethics and the Jewish Political Tradition

The Jews in Europe to 1791

Judaism and the Religious Quest

Classical Political Theory

Plato

Aristotle

Introduction to Political Theory

Utopia and Power in Modern Political Thought

Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature

A Survey of Russian Theater from 1719-1917

A Survey of Twentieth-Century Russian Theater: Chekhov to the Present

Introduction to Sociological Theory

Historical and Comparative Sociology

Marx and Freud

Introduction to Peninsular Spanish Literature

Topics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Spanish Literature

Theater Texts and Theory I

Theater Texts and Theory II