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The Worst of All Possible Worlds: an Introduction to Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer is a true oddity in the history of philosophy. Although a great metaphysical systematizer in the tradition of Leibniz and Hegel, Schopenhauer posed a worldview entirely antithetical to the “optimism” characteristic of traditional Western philosophizing. Whereas...

Philosophy, Ideology, and Jokes: an Introduction to Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek is among the most influential, prolific, and provocative European philosophers of his generation. Amidst a period of tectonic changes, as Soviet socialism came to an end and neoliberalism spread across Europe, Žižek’s thought developed against the grain—due in...

How can we, as finite beings, grasp the concept of infinity? Yet humans have been contemplating infinity for millennia, whether inspired by nature, philosophy, spirituality—or mathematics. This course is a historical and conceptual approach to the latter realm, the mathematics of infinity. Our topics will include the ancient Greeks’ discovery...

Simone de Beauvoir: Existentialism, Phenomenology, Feminism Simone de Beauvoir—activist, author, social critic, philosopher—is considered one of the pioneering figures of existentialist and feminist philosophy. Although her work spans multiple genres and address numerous modern social questions and classic philosophical dilemmas, it was the 1953...

In the process of investigating and treating the enigmatic disorder known as “hysteria,” Sigmund Freud established the discipline of psychoanalysis—and by so doing, profoundly altered Western subjectivity. By insisting that the bodily symptoms of hysterics represented unconscious conflict, Freud established a new way of thinking about human experience,...

Kant’s publication of the Critique of Pure Reason was a seismic event in the history of western philosophy, whose effects continue to be felt today. Enacting a “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy, Kant subjected reason itself to critique—attempting to answer the question: how do we know things at all? What structures and categories does...

“For the philosopher,” writes Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project, “the most interesting thing about fashion is its extraordinary anticipations.” In other words, fashion is, in itself, an avant-garde: it shows us what the world will be like before that world has fully arrived. Its uncanny relation to the new is by no means the only...

How are we to understand loneliness today? It appears that we are facing a mass epidemic of loneliness—one perhaps exacerbated by virological pandemic of COVID-19. Britain has appointed a Minister of Loneliness to counter rising rates of isolation. Approximately 20-43 percent of American adults over the age of 60 experience “frequent or intense...