InfoCoBuild

Aspects of Western Philosophy

Aspects of Western Philosophy. Instructor: Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. This course attempts to give an overview of the major philosophical trends and approaches of the European civilization. It starts with a discussion of the Greek philosophy where we find the historical beginnings of Western thought. After a discussion of the major contributions of the Greek thinkers like the pre-Socratics, Sophists, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the course will have a brief examination of Medieval philosophy. A detailed examination of the Modern Philosophy will follow where we discuss the Rationalism of thinkers like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, the Empiricism of John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume, the critical philosophy of Kant, the absolute idealism of Hegel and the historical materialism of Karl Marx. This will be followed by an examination of Nietzsche's criticism of western philosophy. The remaining portion deal with twentieth century contributions to western philosophy, with an examination of the major traditions of Analytic philosophy and Continental thought. (from nptel.ac.in)

Lecture 26 - Karl Marx: Historical Materialism

Karl Marx: Historical Materialism; The Significance of the Proletariat; The Base Structure-Superstructure Division.


Go to the Course Home or watch other lectures:

Lecture 01 - Greek Philosophy: Ionians, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus and Democritus
Lecture 02 - Sophists, Socrates; Philosophy of Man; Relativism and Subjectivism; the Idea of Good
Lecture 03 - Plato's Idealism: Theory of Ideas
Lecture 04 - Plato: Theory of Knowledge, The Dialectical Method Theory of Soul
Lecture 05 - Aristotle's Criticism of Platonic Idealism and the Concepts of Form and Matter
Lecture 06 - Aristotle's Theory of Causation; Potentiality and Actuality
Lecture 07 - Medieval Philosophy
Lecture 08 - Medieval Philosophy (cont.)
Lecture 09 - Rene Descartes: the Method in Philosophy
Lecture 10 - Rene Descartes: the Mind-body Dualism
Lecture 11 - Spinoza: the Concepts of Substance, Attributes and Modes
Lecture 12 - Spinoza's Pantheism: God-Nature Relationship
Lecture 13 - Leibniz: Monadology
Lecture 14 - The Empiricism of John Locke
Lecture 15 - John Locke: Theory of Knowledge
Lecture 16 - George Berkeley: Immaterialism
Lecture 17 - George Berkeley: Critique of Abstract Ideas
Lecture 18 - David Hume: Impressions and Ideas
Lecture 19 - David Hume: the External World and the Self
Lecture 20 - Critical Philosophy
Lecture 21 - Immanuel Kant: Forms of Sensibility, Categories of Understanding
Lecture 22 - Immanuel Kant: the Idea of Reason Soul, God and the World as a Whole
Lecture 23 - Kant's Ethics; Freedom and Immortality; Problems with Kant
Lecture 24 - Hegel: The Conception of Geist (Spirit)
Lecture 25 - Hegel: Absolute Idealism Consciousness, Self Consciousness and Reason
Lecture 26 - Karl Marx: Historical Materialism
Lecture 27 - Nietzsche: Critique of Western Culture, Religion and Morality
Lecture 28 - Linguistic Turn in British Philosophy, Russell's Logical Atomism
Lecture 29 - Wittgenstein: Early Wittgenstein's Conception of Language and Reality
Lecture 30 - Wittgenstein: Conception of Language-Games and Forms of Life
Lecture 31 - Logical Positivism; Against Metaphysics Scientific Conception of Philosophy
Lecture 32 - Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology and the Methods of Reduction
Lecture 33 - Phenomenological Reduction, Eidetic Reduction and Transcendental Reduction
Lecture 34 - Martin Heidegger: Phenomenological Hermeneutics; Concept of Being
Lecture 35 - Martin Heidegger: Authentic and Inauthentic Existence; Truth as Disclosure
Lecture 36 - Existentialism
Lecture 37 - Sartre's Conception of Human Existence
Lecture 38 - The Concept of Being-in-Itself, Being-for-Itself and Being-for-Others
Lecture 39 - Postmodernism
Lecture 40 - Deconstruction, Feminism, Discourse Theory