How much of this course was history? How similar was it to other history courses you’ve taken? A course syllabus might be useful, but I understand if you’d prefer privacy. I could see this happening with a course on general scientific principles that used history to develop practice problems, but then what you learned would be scientific principles; not really history. Was it just the professor was better as his/her job than other history professors or is there something that’s readily replicable to other history courses?
It was history of philosophy, focused on reading major works chronologically with a good dose of historical context and background for each (e.g. biblical authorship theories, prevailing attitudes that works were responding to, historical events like wars that would have influenced the authors, etc.). Work included twice-weekly journal entries on our readings, occasional quizzes, and essays tying several works together. A partial list of the curriculum, which we read in this (chronological) order, was:
Plato
Aristotle
Aurelius
Bible
St. Augustine
Koran
Avicenna
Aquinus
Hobbes
Locke
Rousseau
Burke
Kant
Hegel
Marx
Nietzsche
W.E.B. Dubois
Simone De Beauvoir
Foucault
Peter Singer
The other hybrid philosophy/history course, the radical one, did have a couple excellent, very historically-oriented, readings. One was Black Jacobins about the Haitian revolution, others were about the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, and a left-radical rebellion against the Bolsheviks in the early USSR (which I have unfortunately forgotten the name of, but it does demonstrate the pluralism of pre-Bolshevik socialism).
Detailed historical explorations were the stronger part of that course, and served to show how clear investigation into the facts could dispel or nuance a charicatured view of history.
How much of this course was history? How similar was it to other history courses you’ve taken? A course syllabus might be useful, but I understand if you’d prefer privacy. I could see this happening with a course on general scientific principles that used history to develop practice problems, but then what you learned would be scientific principles; not really history. Was it just the professor was better as his/her job than other history professors or is there something that’s readily replicable to other history courses?
It was history of philosophy, focused on reading major works chronologically with a good dose of historical context and background for each (e.g. biblical authorship theories, prevailing attitudes that works were responding to, historical events like wars that would have influenced the authors, etc.). Work included twice-weekly journal entries on our readings, occasional quizzes, and essays tying several works together. A partial list of the curriculum, which we read in this (chronological) order, was:
Plato
Aristotle
Aurelius
Bible
St. Augustine
Koran
Avicenna
Aquinus
Hobbes
Locke
Rousseau
Burke
Kant
Hegel
Marx
Nietzsche
W.E.B. Dubois
Simone De Beauvoir
Foucault
Peter Singer
The other hybrid philosophy/history course, the radical one, did have a couple excellent, very historically-oriented, readings. One was Black Jacobins about the Haitian revolution, others were about the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, and a left-radical rebellion against the Bolsheviks in the early USSR (which I have unfortunately forgotten the name of, but it does demonstrate the pluralism of pre-Bolshevik socialism).
Detailed historical explorations were the stronger part of that course, and served to show how clear investigation into the facts could dispel or nuance a charicatured view of history.