The Great War and Modern Philosophy: A Free Online Course

Above, you can watch the lec­tures from a course called The Great War and Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy. Taught by Nico­las de War­ren, Research Pro­fes­sor in Phi­los­o­phy at KU Leu­ven Uni­ver­si­ty, the course cov­ers this basic ground:

World War 1 was the orig­i­nal cat­a­stro­phe of the 20th-cen­tu­ry. This course inves­ti­gates the com­plex ways in which the First World War mobi­lized philo­soph­i­cal reflec­tion dur­ing the war and the var­ied ways in which philo­soph­i­cal thought respond­ed to the war.

Stu­dents in this course will be intro­duced to dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal reac­tions to the First World War through dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of texts, doc­u­ments, images, art­works, film, and music. The rela­tion between phi­los­o­phy and poet­ry will also be explored. In this course, stu­dents will gain his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge, con­cep­tu­al under­stand­ing, and lit­er­a­cy for a clear­er grasp of the com­plex ways in which phi­los­o­phy and the Great War inter­sect­ed.

Peri­od­i­cal­ly, this course is offered as a MOOC, fea­tur­ing more pol­ished lec­tures, over on edX.

Thinkers cov­ered in the course include: Carl von Clause­witz, Carl Schmitt, Franz Rosen­zweig, Edmund Husserl, and more.

The Great War and Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy will be added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.