Office: 526 FDH

Phone: 895-4038 (office)

809-4292 (cell)

Office Hrs: MWF 1:30-2:30 (and by appt.)

E-Mail: beiseckd@unlv.nevada.edu

Website: www.scsv.nevada.edu/~beiseckd

Course Aim and Objectives: Quite simply, our aim this semester is to become acquainted with some of the work of three old warhorses of 19^th century philosophical thought: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Hegel. By the end of the term, students should be able to articulate the respective contributions these three philosophers made to our philosophical tradition.

Texts (required): Soren Kierkegaard, The Present Age (Harper Torchbooks, 1962)

Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Penguin, 1985)

Friederich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (Oxford, 1996)

G. W. F. Hegel, Reason in History (Bobbs-Merrill, 1954)

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford, 1977)

Additional Recommended Text: German Philosophers (Oxford, 1997)

Internet Resources: There’s lots of good material on the philosophers we’ll be studying available on the web, including original texts. The following websites index much of the available resources and might prove relevant and useful to the present course:

Friederich Nietzsche Site - http://www.fns.org.uk/fnslink.htm

The Hegel Society of America - http://www.hegel.org/links.html

External links to these sites are posted on my website.

Expectations and Requirements: Everyone should come to class having already read the assignments and prepared to talk about them. Part of your grade will depend upon how well (and how collegially!) you participate in class discussion. On occasion, I might also assign individual students to make short presentations to the class.

Class participation and presentations will comprise approximately 10% of your final grade. In addition, for each of the short works we’ll be covering, I will assign a short (3-5 page) paper or project on a topic of my choosing. You will have approximately a week to complete each of these assignments, which will be worth about 65% of your final grade. The remaining 25% will be based on your performance on a (most likely take-home) final exam focusing of Hegel’s Phenomenology. As always, borderline cases will be settled at the whim of the instructor.

Learning and Enhancement Services (LES) houses Disability Services, Tutoring Services, and Learning Strategies. If you have a documented disability that requires assistance, you will need to contact LES for coordination in your academic accommodations. LES is located in the Reynolds Services Complex, suite 137. The DRC phone number is 895-0866 or TDD 895-0652. You may also visit their website at http://www.unlv.edu/studentlife/les.

Tentative Courseplan: We will begin with Kierkegaard’s The Present Age, followed by Fear and Trembling. We’ll then move on to Hegel’s Reason in History and Nietzsche’s Genealogy. I anticipate spending approximately two weeks on each of these texts. For the remaining third or half of the semester, we’ll plow as far into Hegel’s Phenomenology as we can or dare.