EU437      Half Unit
Europe Beyond Modernity

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

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This course engages with the deepest roots and fundamental trajectory of the contemporary European world as identified by major thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida. Taking up and problematising the claim made by Emmanuel Levinas that "Europe is the Bible and the Greeks", the course explores the idea that Europe today is a cultural and political movement in deconstruction, a movement beyond its own modern self-understanding which might be summarised by Nietzsche's madman's pronouncement of the death of God. As Derrida, a leading theorist of this conception puts it, "one should, more prudently, say "Greek, Christian and beyond" to conceive the formation of the contemporary European heritage. This suggestion not only makes it possible to acknowledge many other important cultural sources in this heritage (Judaic and Islamic at the very least) but also, and above all, directs us towards what, in Nietzsche's wake, can be identified as "the passage beyond" - the movement in which the European tradition "tends of itself to break with itself". There is no suggestion that the heritage and future of Europe are disconnected in this "passage beyond", and none of the authors explored in this course seek to reject the European heritage or want simply to destroy it. On the contrary, and always in its name, the attempt is made in their writings to effect a renewal of the European world which could propel it in a new direction beyond Enlightenment modernity. The key themes in this renewal will be explored in relation to a "beyond modernity" condition becoming visible in philosophy, politics, technology and religion.
Although this course focuses on carefully selected philosophical texts, there is no expectation that students taking the course will have a background in philosophy.

15 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.
1.5 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

The Lecture slot will be in the form of a flipped-lecture, with the lecture itself available on Moodle in pre-recorded form.

A review session will be held at the start of the Spring Term to prepare for the online assessment.

Essay (2000 words)

Essay (2000 words)

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
• Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology
• Jacques Derrida, "Faith and Knowledge" in Religion (eds Derrida and Vattimo)
• Robert Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem.

Written test (100%)

The written test for this course will be administered via Moodle. Questions will be made available at a set date/time and students will be given a set period in the ST to complete the answers to questions and upload their responses back into Moodle.