Western Civilization (Fall 2015)

Class Location: Veritas A 101

Class Schedule: Mon 3-5pm, Wed 3-4pm
TA: Nam Nguyen hongnam95@gmail.com

Prof. Hui Bon Hoa

Office Location: Veritas B 433
Office Hours: Wednesday 4-6pm
and by appointment on Mondays

Course Description
This course offers a survey of the ideas and historical events that have shaped Western
(mostly West European) culture from the 17th to the 20th century, or the period usually
referred to as modernity. Lectures will examine developments in philosophy, politics,
literature, and the visual arts, and will center on short reading assignments excerpted from the
Great Works. The guiding theme of the course will be the fate of the Enlightenment
project. Throughout the semester, we will return to the question of how the ideal of universal
emancipation through the use of reason has been pursued, redefined, and critiqued in the
course of modernity. Within this framework, we will also track shifts in the key concepts of
freedom, subjectivity, truth, and art.
Requirements: Weekly reading assignments; attendance; midterm and final exams.
Exam questions may draw on any material from lectures and readings, including aspects of
the readings not explicitly covered in lecture.
Grading: Midterm Exam (50%) and Final Exam (50%)
The class is based on a relative grading scale according to Yonseis official grading policy.
Classes with an enrollment of >20 can have at most 35% of grades in the A range and 35% in
the B range. To avoid false expectations, I will refrain from assigning letter grades to exams
and will only provide numerical scores and the distribution for the class.
Exams will consist of multiple-choice questions. The midterm will cover material from the
first half the semester and the final will cover material from the second half. Both exams are
required; missing either will result in an F grade for the class. Make-up exams will only be
offered under truly unavoidable circumstances.
Academic Integrity
Anyone caught cheating on the exams will receive an F for the course.
Attendance
In accordance with Yonsei policy, missing 1/3 of all classes will result automatically in an F.
Being more than 10 minutes late to class will be counted as an absence.
You will be allowed a total of THREE absences (excused or unexcused) without penalty.
Beyond these three free absences, the only absences that will be exempt from penalty will
be those requested by letter from another Yonsei professor. Any other absence will result in
the deduction of one point from your final grade.
You are required to keep track of your own absences. Do not bother the TA with queries
about your attendance record. If you are late to class by 10 minutes or more, it is safe to
assume that you have been marked absent for that class.
Electronic Devices are allowed only if they are used in a discreet and considerate way. Do
not distract those around you by waving your bright screen about. If you use a laptop for
taking notes, please sit at the back. We will make a seating chart during lecture on Monday,
September 7, so make sure you are sitting in an appropriate spot on that day.

Audio Recordings of Lectures will be uploaded on the YSCEC Blackboard by the TA.
Audio recordings are for students private use only and not to be shared outside of the class.
Questions about Course Material can be discussed in office hours. No questions will be
accepted over email, except in advance of the midterm and final review sessions.
Accommodations for students with disabilities
Students needing special accommodations because of a documented disability must speak
with me by Wednesday, September 16. All discussions will remain confidential.
Course readers will be available for purchase at DocuFriends.
Weekly Schedule
1
Sept 2 W
2

Overview of the course

Sept 7 M

Descartes and the Scientific Revolution

Ren Descartes, Discourse on the Method. Guest Lecture: Prof. Joe
Hwang

Sept 9 W

Discourse on the Method, contd. Guest Lecture: Prof. Hwang

Sept 14 M

The Enlightenment in Scotland and Germany

David Hume, Of Miracles. Guest Lecture: Prof. Brad Bow

Sept 16 W

Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?

Sept 21 M

The Enlightenment in France

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

4
Sept 23 W

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; Petition from

Jewish Communities, 28 January 1790; Civil rights for free Blacks, 15
May 1791; Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman
and of the Citizeness

Sept 28 M

Hegel
Chuseok: No class

Sept 30 W

G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Lord and Bondsman)

Oct 5 M

Marx
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
(Alienated Labor, Private Property and Communism)

Oct 7 W

Marx, On the Jewish Question

Oct 12 M

German Romanticism
E. T. A. Hoffman, The Serapion Brethren. Guest Lecture: Prof. Martin
Wagner

Oct 14 W

Review Session

8
Oct 16 - 22
9

Midterm Exam Period

Midterm Exam (schedule TBA). No class.

Oct 26 M

Imperialism
Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden; Henry Labouchere, The
Brown Mans Burden; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Oct 28 W

Edward Said, Orientalism; George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

Nov 2 M

Modern Scientific Concepts of Humanity

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species. Guest Lecture: Prof. Tim
Fuller

Nov 4 W

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Fetishism

Nov 9 M

Early Modernist Artistic Movements

Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life; Paris Spleen

Nov 11 W

Decadence (reading TBA). Guest Lecture: Prof. Stefano Ercolino

Nov 16 M

Modernism and the Avant-Garde

T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent; The Waste Land

10

11

12
Nov 18 W
13

Viktor Shklovsky, Art as Technique; Andr Breton, The Manifesto of

Surrealism

Nov 23 M

Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism. Guest Lecture: Prof.
Mandel Cabrera

Nov 25 W

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Dec 30 M

The Enlightenment Project Revisited

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment

Dec 2 W

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

Dec 7 M

Postmodernism
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism

14

15

16
Dec 9 W

Review & Exam Period

Review session
Final Exam (schedule TBA).