OBS 117 History of Contemporary Western Philosophy

The purpose of this course is to engage both the minds and hearts to a more systematization and innovative horizon of the latest philosophical trends something that has missed during the modern period. Many of the older mechanisms and the theoretical formulations lack the capacity to solve the problem of the modern times. The period heralds the rise of analytical and continental philosophy which gave philosophical thinking a new direction shifting the attention from the traditional topics. There are a good number of European thinkers who paved the way for the contemporary philosophy. Obviously, the impetus of the discussion derives from the philosophical developments of the second half of the nineteenth century through the fundamental schools such as idealism, positivism, utilitarianism and neo-Kantianism. The names worth to be discussed in the course are Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, theistic and atheistic existentialism, structuralism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, Hermeneutics and critical theory and in the analytical philosophy; Logical atomism, Positivism, Wittgenstein, ordinary Language philosophy and Pragmatism.

1. Marias, J., History of Philosophy, New York, 1966.
2. Karl Marx, Das Capital, Book One, The process of production of Capital, Moscow, 1887.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
4. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Dover Publications, 2012
5. Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Alianza Editorial, 2011.
6. Edmund Husserl, Ideas; General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, Routledge, 2012.
7. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditation, An Introduction to Phenomenology, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, London, 1982.
8. Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, Yale University Press, 2000.
9. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2001.
10. , Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London, 1922.
11. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation, Basil Blackwell, 1982.
12. Sheldon, P., Peterfreund & Theodore C. Denise, Contemporary Philosophy and its Origins, New York, 1967.
13. Thilly, F., A History of Philosophy, Allahabad, 1976.
14. Hirendra Mohan Datta, A., The Chief Currents of Contemporary Philosophy, Calcutta. 1961.
15. Caponigri, R., A History of Western Philosophy, Notre Dame, 1971.
16. Copleston, F., A History of Philosophy, Volumes VII, VIII, IX, Doubleday, New York 1994.
17. Scruton, R., A Short History of Modern Philosophy. From Descartes to Wittgenstein, Routledge, London 1995.