The History of Analytic Philosophy and its Relationship to the 20th and 21st Century Political Climate

The course will have two main goals. First, to dispel the myth that Analytic philosophy is ahistorical. And second, to expose the fact that academia has always had political relevance. We will look at both some of the classical figures of Analytic philosophy such as G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Ludwig Wittgestein, and their contemporary counter-parts in the face of John Dewey, Richard Rorty, Kwame Appiah, and Judith Butler, to name but a few, and trace, through their own original published works (and private correspondence where applicable), their political visions for both the university as well as society at large.