Knowledge and power
Proposed to be offered next in 1998
Harry Redner
12 points
* 2 hours per week
* Clayton
Objectives On successful completion of this subject, students should have an understanding of the role of ideas in politics and in social change in general, and should be aware of the potential both for good and evil of ideas and their carriers, intellectuals.
Synopsis Intellectuals of one kind or another have always played a crucial role in politics, but perhaps no more so than in the ideological battles, revolutions and totalitarian movements of this century. Unfortunately, all too often they have lent themselves to the worst of political excesses. When it comes to the absurdities and fanaticisms of our time, as George Orwell, himself an intellectual, puts it, `it takes an intellectual to believe something like this.' This course will look at this problem in two ways: firstly in general terms by reference to a number of theories of the role of intellectuals in politics; secondly by undertaking a number of individual case studies of the political involvement of some of the leading thinkers of this century. We will concentrate particularly on the politics of the celebrated philosophers Heidegger, Lukacs, Gentile, Wittgenstein, Sartre and Foucault.
Assessment Essay (6000 words): 50%
* Examination (3 hours): 50%
Recommended texts
Bauman Z Legislators and interpreters Polity Press, 1987
Benda J The treason of the intellectuals Beacon Press, 1955
Mannheim K Ideology and utopia RKP, 1954
Rieff P (ed) On intellectuals Doubleday, 1964
Szelenyi I and Konrad G The intellectuals on the road to class power Harvester Press, 1979
Wohl R The generation of 1914 Harvard U P, 1979
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