University Bulletin 2002-03: History of Ideas

University Bulletin 2002-03

An interdepartmental program
History of Ideas

Courses of Study:
Minor

Program website: http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/historyideas/

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.

The Program encourages students to integrate their HOID courses with their major and to include a wide range of areas in the sciences as well as in the humanities and social sciences.

Students who complete the requirements of the program receive a History of Ideas certificate in the History of Ideas and notations on their transcripts.

How to Become a Program Member (Minor)

Students normally 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 major as well as with the director of the Program.

Committee

Tzvi Abusch
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Pamela Allara
(Fine Arts)

Joyce Antler
(American Studies)

Bernadette Brooten
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

John Burt
(English and American Literature)

Mary Campbell
(English and American Literature)

Jacob Cohen
(American Studies)

Stephen Dowden
(Germanic and Slavic Languages)

Gordon Fellman
(Sociology)

William Flesch
(English and American Literature)

Richard Gaskins
(American Studies / Legal Studies)

Robert Greenberg
(Philosophy)

Mark Hulliung
(History)

Patricia Johnston
(Classical Studies)

Jessie Ann Owens
(Music)

Laura Quinney
(English and American Literature)

Michael Randall
(Romance and Comparative Literature)

Shulamit Reinharz
(Sociology and Women's Studies)

George Ross
(Politics and Sociology)

Govind Sreenivasan
(History)

Andrew Swensen
(Germanic and Slavic Languages)

Faculty

Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, Cochair
(Classics / History of Ideas)

Robin Feuer Miller, Cochair
(Germanic and Slavic Languages)

Requirements for the Minor

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 major.

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

HOID 98a Independent Study
Signature of the instructor required.
Usually offered every year.
Staff

HOID 98b Independent Study
Signature of the instructor required.
Usually offered every year.
Staff

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

HOID 101a Thinking about Ethics with Socrates
[ hum ]
Enrollment limited to 20.
Conducts Socratic discussions--on friendship, virtue, piety, courage, sex, knowledge, poetry, and justice--between Socrates represented in Plato's early Socratic dialogues and later philosophers who addressed those topics (Kant, Aquinas, Nagel, Descartes, Rorty, Wilde). Using the evidence of the Platonic dialogues, we shall enact the Trial of Socrates. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the fall of 2001.
Ms. Rorty

HOID 108b Greek and Roman Ethics: From Plato to the Stoics
[ hum ]
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 every third year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.
Ms. Rorty

HOID 111b September 11: Roots and Aftermath
[ hum ]
Enrollment limited to 100.
An exploration of the antecedents, meaning, and possible future repercussions of what happened on September 11, 2001 through perspectives of politics, history, literature, the arts, religion, regional studies, and other disciplines. Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2002.
Messrs. Makiya and Terris

HOID 120a Immorality: Its Sources, Varieties, and Charms
[ hum ]
Traces 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 every second year. Last offered in the spring of 2002.
Ms. Rorty

HOID 124a Stoicism Now and Then
[ hum ]
Why be a Stoic? What needs and fears does Stoicism address? What are the resistances to it? What are the beliefs and practices, the philosophic assumptions and consequences of classical Stoicism? How has it been transformed historically? A close study of Greek and Roman Stoics, Spinoza, Kant, and Freud; Stoic influences on contemporary political theory and literary works. Usually offered every second year. Will be offered in the fall of 2002.
Ms. Rorty

HOID 127a Seminar in the History of Ideas: Case Studies
[ hum ]
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. Last offered in the spring of 2002.
Ms. Rorty

HOID 130b Varieties of Liberty, Freedom, and Choice
[ hum ss ]
Conceptions of public, political liberty affect ideas of individual "free will" and vice versa. Traces 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 every fourth year. Last offered in the spring of 1999.
Ms. Rorty

HOID 140a What is Philosophy: Politics? Science? Poetry? Religion?
[ hum ]
Enrollment limited to 25.
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 third year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.
Ms. Rorty

HOID 169a Reconciling Justice and Ethics
[ hum ]
Enrollment limited to 20.
Focusing on historical transformations in the ideal of universal equality, this seminar traces shifts in the relation between conceptions of justice and those of other ethical ideals, contrasting "Olympian justice" (Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant) with "naturalistic emergent justice" (Rousseau, Hume, Rawls, Williams). Usually offered every second year. Last offered in the fall of 2001.
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.

AMST 100a
Classic Texts in the American Experience: Through the Civil War

AMST 180b
Topics in the History of American Education

AMST 187a
The Legal Boundaries of Public and Private Life

ANTH 80a
World Religions

ANTH 166a
The Nature of Human Nature

ANTH 187a
Materials Research in Archeology, I

CLAS 115b
Topics in Greek and Roman History

CLAS 170
Classical Mythology

COML 102a
Love in the Middle Ages

COML 103b
Madness and Folly in Renaissance Literature

COML 106a
European Romanticism

COML 127a
Night, Death, and the Devil: The Fantastic and the Grotesque