In the first half of the semester we will survey three roughly construed traditions in 20th century European philosophy: phenomenology (including existentialism and hermeneutics) , structuralism (including post-structuralism, deconstruction, etc.), and marxism (including critical theory).  In each case we will follow programmatic attempts to rethink traditional ideas of subjects, language, and rationality, and in each we will find ways in which early programs are fundamentally revised and a confidence in reason is put into question.  Thus we will see how each tradition begins with an effort to renew the enlightenment tradition but leads to a renewed sense of the crisis of that tradition. 

In the second half of the course we will draw from our earlier discussions and other texts to consider whether the problem of rationality cannot be recast in social terms.  Here we will focus on relations of knowledge and power from the standpoint of linguistically and historically conceived struggles over recognition.  While much of the discussion will be theoretical, we will work on developing historical examples, e.g, from recent social movements.  In particular, we will be interested in political uses of the idea of identity.  Key thinkers here will be Foucault, Habermas, and Honneth.