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European Thought & Culture in the 20th Century
With this sequel to his recent series on European Thought and Culture in the 19th Century, Professor Lloyd Kramer introduces the major intellectual themes and debates that decisively shaped 20th-century European culture and which still define our world today. An award-winning teacher at The University of North Carolina, Professor Kramer's approach is incisive, balanced, and scrupulously fair. Professor Kramer is very clear about what he believes you can get out of these lectures. "Our objective throughout this course is to understand the ideas of influential 20th-century European thinkers, to reflect on the interactions between ideas and historical contexts, and to think critically about how the ideas of creative 20th-century writers continue to raise questions for our own time." "Intellectual history analyzes the evolving dialogues among the people of other places and times, but it also emphasizes the importance of sustaining a critical dialogue between the present and the past."This course seeks to expand our dialogue with the intellectual world of 20th-century Europe and to show how the challenging ideas of that historical era are still vital components of the world's contemporary cultural life." Two books containing 24 lectures total.
13 pages, Audible Audio
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 18, 2021
I listened to this immediately after the nineteenth century lectures; Kramer seems if anything to be more at home in the twentieth century, particularly mid-century France, which makes sense as he indicates about halfway through that he was in Paris to listen to some of Foucault's lectures; I also just scanned his CV now and that does seem to be more focused on France (although it also seems like he's written a lot on Habermas). That isn't to reflect badly on the prior lectures, but just that there was a bit more personal interest and knowledge of details that comes across. Throughout all of his lectures Kramer maintains excellent organization and discipline; there's no weird surprises in the way anything is presented or delivered, which gives one the mental space to focus on what he is saying rather than the form in which he is saying it.
From other lectures (particularly Rick Roderick) and readings, I was already at least acquainted with about 70%+ of the figures Kramer discusses. The primary value for me was that Kramer's lectures give a chronology and a sort of interstitial structure between lots of intellectuals who I didn't really know the chains of influence and reaction between them. So like I'm familiar with longue durée history from Eric Hobsbawm, but I wasn't familiar with its French origins with Bloch and Febvre until this lecture series. I was familiar with existentialism and (to a lesser extent) structuralism but wouldn't really have thought to set the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss as a kind of rejection of the radical existential free will of Sartre until Kramer pointed it out, but of course it's obvious once you see it. Similarly, setting post-structuralism of Deleuze, Foucault, and Derrida as a reaction to what seems like a kind of determinism of structuralism; and Habermas as a reaction to the seeming non-rationality of a worldview like Derrida's; puts all of those thinkers and their worldviews into a kind of sequential context that makes them all make more sense.
The main figure that I feel Kramer does a disservice to is Keynes, for whom Kramer gives what seems like an Americanized simplification as the guy who came up with deficit spending in a depression. Which he did. But there really was no mention of Keynes's more social democratic views, the man who wrote Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren and was forever wishing to turn the sort of socialized economic focus prompted by The First World War towards things like basic human needs, so that people could have more time for arts and leisure. It also seemed like a bit of an omission to take the time to point out that Keynes was married to a ballerina, but omit that he was 38 at the time and had until that point been almost exclusively interested in men. For more on Keynes I highly recommend Zach Cater's The Price of Peace; if you've read this far it means you're pretty interested in European Thought & Culture in the 20th Century, and Carter's book reads like a novel but gives an intellectual overview of the 20th century which is hard to beat. And while I'm recommending you things, I also highly recommend Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, and another Great Courses, Jonathan Steinberg's European History and European Lives for which I also have a review on goodreads. That also serves as a general reminder that in many cases all Kramer can give -- given the constraints of the breadth of the subject matter -- is like an introduction to an introduction to each thinker. Nevertheless, introductions to introductions have their place, and this is well executed.
From other lectures (particularly Rick Roderick) and readings, I was already at least acquainted with about 70%+ of the figures Kramer discusses. The primary value for me was that Kramer's lectures give a chronology and a sort of interstitial structure between lots of intellectuals who I didn't really know the chains of influence and reaction between them. So like I'm familiar with longue durée history from Eric Hobsbawm, but I wasn't familiar with its French origins with Bloch and Febvre until this lecture series. I was familiar with existentialism and (to a lesser extent) structuralism but wouldn't really have thought to set the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss as a kind of rejection of the radical existential free will of Sartre until Kramer pointed it out, but of course it's obvious once you see it. Similarly, setting post-structuralism of Deleuze, Foucault, and Derrida as a reaction to what seems like a kind of determinism of structuralism; and Habermas as a reaction to the seeming non-rationality of a worldview like Derrida's; puts all of those thinkers and their worldviews into a kind of sequential context that makes them all make more sense.
The main figure that I feel Kramer does a disservice to is Keynes, for whom Kramer gives what seems like an Americanized simplification as the guy who came up with deficit spending in a depression. Which he did. But there really was no mention of Keynes's more social democratic views, the man who wrote Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren and was forever wishing to turn the sort of socialized economic focus prompted by The First World War towards things like basic human needs, so that people could have more time for arts and leisure. It also seemed like a bit of an omission to take the time to point out that Keynes was married to a ballerina, but omit that he was 38 at the time and had until that point been almost exclusively interested in men. For more on Keynes I highly recommend Zach Cater's The Price of Peace; if you've read this far it means you're pretty interested in European Thought & Culture in the 20th Century, and Carter's book reads like a novel but gives an intellectual overview of the 20th century which is hard to beat. And while I'm recommending you things, I also highly recommend Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, and another Great Courses, Jonathan Steinberg's European History and European Lives for which I also have a review on goodreads. That also serves as a general reminder that in many cases all Kramer can give -- given the constraints of the breadth of the subject matter -- is like an introduction to an introduction to each thinker. Nevertheless, introductions to introductions have their place, and this is well executed.
March 27, 2016
بهترین مجموعه از میان تمام درسهایی که تا کنون از The Teaching Company دیدم. للوید کرامر که خود دوران دانشجویی را در فرانسه طی کرده است روندهای تفکر اروپایی را پوشش داده است. جنگ جهانی اول و ریشههای آن و نیز پیامد آن بر ادبیات پس از جنگ (مثلا نوشتههای ویرجینیا وولف) به خوبی پوشش داده شده است. نویسندههای مطرح قرن بیستم هر یک در کانتکست تاریخی و مکانی خود بحث میشوند: پروست، وولف، کافکا، داستایفسکی. مثلا کافکا با پیش زمینه یهودی در دنیای آلمانی زمان بیرون آن و در حاشیه بودن او به خوبی برای خواننده آثارش راهنما خواهد بود. همچنین داستایفسکی و طغیان او علیه دستاوردهای عصر جدید که دستمایه آثار او در عدم کفایت عقل مدرن برای زندگی به زیبایی توضیح داده میشود.
ریشههای هولوکاست و واکنشهای به آن هم از آن موضوعاتی است که برای یک خواننده غیر غربی که شاید دلیل واکنش تند کنونی به اظهارات ضد هولوکاست را درک نکند بسیار راهگشا خواهد بود.
در کل مجموعهی بسیار مفیدی است در ارتباط با هنر، ادبیات، سیاست و فلسفه و در مجموع تفکر قرن بیستم اروپا همراه با تحولات سیاسی موازی این سیر تفکر که در ۲۴ قسمت ۳۰ دقیقهای سرنخهای عالی برای مطالعات آتی به بیننده علاقمند میدهد.
ریشههای هولوکاست و واکنشهای به آن هم از آن موضوعاتی است که برای یک خواننده غیر غربی که شاید دلیل واکنش تند کنونی به اظهارات ضد هولوکاست را درک نکند بسیار راهگشا خواهد بود.
در کل مجموعهی بسیار مفیدی است در ارتباط با هنر، ادبیات، سیاست و فلسفه و در مجموع تفکر قرن بیستم اروپا همراه با تحولات سیاسی موازی این سیر تفکر که در ۲۴ قسمت ۳۰ دقیقهای سرنخهای عالی برای مطالعات آتی به بیننده علاقمند میدهد.
January 23, 2024
1. The Origins of 20th-Century European Thought
2. Universities, Cities, and the Modern “Culture Industry”
3. Naturalism in Fin-de-Siècle Literature
4. The New Avant-Garde Literary Culture
5. Rethinking the Scientific Tradition
6. The Emergence of Modern Art
7. Émile Durkheim and French Social Thought
ANOMIE—breakdown between the individual and the community—feeling of loneliness, separation
8. Max Weber and the New German Sociology
“Weber and other pioneering German scholars such as Georg Simmel focused on the problems of human history and consciousness that emerged in highly rationalized, impersonal, and "disenchanted" modern mass societies.”
9. The Great War and Cultural Pessimism
THE DECLINE OF LIBERALISM—increase of government control, end of laissez-faire
CRITICISM OF THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
Spengler’s DECLINE OF THE WEST
10. Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalytic Theory
LOSS OF FAITH IN REASON leads to the interest in human irrationality.
11. Freud, Jung, and the Constraints of Civilized Life
12. Poetry and Surrealism After the Great War
“British poets such as Wilfred Owen, W. B. Yeats, and T. S. Eliot wrote movingly of sadness, loss, and confusion during and after the war. On the Continent, movements such as Dada and André Breton's surrealism radicalized the literary critique of reason.”
13. The Modern Novel: Joyce and Woolf
14. The Continental Novel: Proust, Kafka, Mann
15. Language and Reality in Modern Philosophy
16. Revisiting Marxism and Liberalism
ANTONIO GRAMSCI—Italian Marxist Philosopher—CULTURAL HEGEMONY—use ideology rather than violence, force, or coercion
17. Responses to Nazism and the Holocaust
18. Existential Philosophy
19. Literature and Memory in Postwar Culture
20. Redefining Modern Feminism
21. History, Anthropology, and Structuralism
22. Poststructuralist Thought: Foucault and Derrida
FOUCAULT—knowledge always has to do with power—influenced by Nietzsche’s will to power
DERRIDA—DECONSTRUCT—take apart modern western thought and its idea of truth
23. European Postmodernism
24. Changes and Traditions at Century’s End
2. Universities, Cities, and the Modern “Culture Industry”
3. Naturalism in Fin-de-Siècle Literature
4. The New Avant-Garde Literary Culture
5. Rethinking the Scientific Tradition
6. The Emergence of Modern Art
7. Émile Durkheim and French Social Thought
ANOMIE—breakdown between the individual and the community—feeling of loneliness, separation
8. Max Weber and the New German Sociology
“Weber and other pioneering German scholars such as Georg Simmel focused on the problems of human history and consciousness that emerged in highly rationalized, impersonal, and "disenchanted" modern mass societies.”
9. The Great War and Cultural Pessimism
THE DECLINE OF LIBERALISM—increase of government control, end of laissez-faire
CRITICISM OF THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
Spengler’s DECLINE OF THE WEST
10. Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalytic Theory
LOSS OF FAITH IN REASON leads to the interest in human irrationality.
11. Freud, Jung, and the Constraints of Civilized Life
12. Poetry and Surrealism After the Great War
“British poets such as Wilfred Owen, W. B. Yeats, and T. S. Eliot wrote movingly of sadness, loss, and confusion during and after the war. On the Continent, movements such as Dada and André Breton's surrealism radicalized the literary critique of reason.”
13. The Modern Novel: Joyce and Woolf
14. The Continental Novel: Proust, Kafka, Mann
15. Language and Reality in Modern Philosophy
16. Revisiting Marxism and Liberalism
ANTONIO GRAMSCI—Italian Marxist Philosopher—CULTURAL HEGEMONY—use ideology rather than violence, force, or coercion
17. Responses to Nazism and the Holocaust
18. Existential Philosophy
19. Literature and Memory in Postwar Culture
20. Redefining Modern Feminism
21. History, Anthropology, and Structuralism
22. Poststructuralist Thought: Foucault and Derrida
FOUCAULT—knowledge always has to do with power—influenced by Nietzsche’s will to power
DERRIDA—DECONSTRUCT—take apart modern western thought and its idea of truth
23. European Postmodernism
24. Changes and Traditions at Century’s End
November 16, 2019
A very accessible, if quite basic survey of European thinkers in the 20th century. Kramer has one of the more pleasant voices of the (male) American professors used by the Great Courses, lacking the dramatic inflection and public speaking mannerisms, which make most of these speakers indistinguishable from each other. Substance-wise, I felt this one had more sections on literature than the 19th century installment, but I might remember wrong. I was happy to hear the social sciences well represented here as well. Some unnecessary psychologising here and there (Foucault was gay, hence his life was complicated???), but otherwise solid. Plus for the section on feminism as well.
January 18, 2019
A fascinating and well-presented romp through the 20th century's changing intellectual landscape. It follows on from his earlier 19th century series and I would thoroughly recommend them both - I'll definitely be going back and re-listening.
December 18, 2020
Prof. Kramer has given a clear thorough explanation of the primary intellectual forces which shaped 20th century thought. I recommend this for anyone who wants a good overview of this area.
April 24, 2023
Solid introduction to the subject, but given that the course is only 24 lectures, it is necessarily cursory at times.
December 26, 2014
A very good review of intellectual currents of this time. I was happy to see a chapter on Durkheim; he deserves more attention. I had no idea Conrad was such a genius (fluent in three languages and wrote his masterpieces in an adopted language). My first introduction to the "culture industry".
April 30, 2023
A mixture of literature, arts, and social ideas making up intellectual history of recent times.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews