Ideas of the Twentieth Century

Course Description
Friedrich Nietzsche predicted that the twentieth century would be a century of great
wars. It was. More than one hundred million people died in wars; about the same
number died at the hands of their own governments.
In its early years, philosophers, scientists, psychologists, artists, musicians, poets, and
writers of fiction overthrew our understanding of the physical world, of human behavior,
of thought and its limits, and our understanding of art, creativity, and beauty. The
challenge of totalitarianism divided those committed to freedom. The devastation of two
World Wars raised deep questions about the nature and meaning of human existence.
This course will explore these themes as they develop in twentieth-century philosophy,
history, literature, art, and music.

Required Text
Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm
Plus a variety of readings online, linked from the syllabus.
The University of Texas at Austin
Fall 2012
Unique Numbers 64285-64310
MWF 1:00-2:00pm
UTC 3.122

Syllabus
8/29 Welcome to the course!
8/31 The Problem of NormativityDavid Hume, Morals are not derived from
reason, A Treatise of Human Nature; Wilfrid Sellars, Philosophy and the Scientific
Image of Man I, II, VII
The Abdication of Belief: 1848-1900
9/5 MarxismKarl Marx, The German Ideology; Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the
Communist Party, Chapters 1 and 2
9/7 Relativism Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach; Friedrich Nietzsche, selections: The
Cheerful Science and Human, All Too Human
The Wisdom of the Age: 1900-1910
9/10 Realism and ObjectivitySir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia
9/12 CynicismGeorge Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists*
9/14 Art and Photography at the Turn of the CenturyJohn Szarkowski, The
Photographers Eye; Guillaume Apollinaire, Photographie
Downward to Darkness: 1910-1920
9/17 Progressivism Woodrow Wilson, selections from The New Freedom
9/19 World War IThomas Hardy, Channel Firing; Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum
Est, Exposure; Siegfried Sassoon, The Redeemer, A Subaltern; Edmund Blunden,
1916 Seen from 1921; Philip Larkin, MCMXIV; Woodrow Wilson, The Fourteen
Points; Winston Churchill, The Follies of the Victors, Chapter 1 of The Gathering
Storm*
9/21 Art and Photography 1900-1920 Guillaume Apollinaire, June 14, 1915; War;
F. T Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto
9/24 Marxism and the Russian RevolutionV. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?
9/26 Civilization in DeclineT. S. Eliot, The Waste Land I, II, III*
9/28 Civilization in DeclineT. S. Eliot, The Waste Land IV, V
No Country for Old Men: 1920-1930
10/1 Civilization in DeclineW. B. Yeats, The Second Coming and Sailing to
Byzantium; Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, Chapter 1
10/3 Defending CivilizationRudyard Kipling, If, The Holy War, The Islanders,
Tommy, The Gods of the Copybook Headings,* The Law of the Jungle
10/5 Ethics in CambridgeE. M. Forster, What I Believe
10/8 Deep StructureSigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapters II, III,
and IV

10/10 Masks and IllusionsLuigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author*

10/12 Art and Photography in the 1920s Andr Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism;
Hugo Ball, Dada Manifesto; Tristan Tzara, The Dada Manifesto and Lecture on
Dada
10/15 ProsperityF. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise; Winston Churchill, Peace
at Its Zenith, Chapter 2 of The Gathering Storm
10/17 Midterm Exam Review
10/19 Midterm Exam
We Are Dust and Dreams: 1930-1940
10/22 Fascism Benito Mussolini, What Is Fascism?; George Orwell, What Is
Fascism?; Winston Churchill, Lurking Dangers, Chapter 3 of The Gathering Storm
10/24 DepressionFranklin Delano Roosevelt, Commonwealth Club Address; First
Inaugural Address; Huey Long, Every Man a King; Richard Vedder, Explaining the
Great Depression; The Great Depression at history.com
10/26 Art and Photography in the 1930sJames Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us
Now Praise Famous Men Preface13, 2951; Erskine Caldwell and Margaret BourkeWhite, You Have Seen Their Faces 17; Dorothea Lange Collection, Museum of
Modern Art
10/29 TotalitarianismChurchill, Adolf Hitler and The Locust Years, Chapters 4 and
5 of The Gathering Storm
10/31 AggressionChurchill, Chapter 611 of The Gathering Storm
11/2 ParalysisChurchill, Chapters 1319 of The Gathering Storm
Not without Glory: 1940-1950
11/5 World War IIChurchill, Chapters 2027, 37 of The Gathering Storm
11/7 World War IIChurchill, We Shall Fight on the Beaches (audio); Blood, Toil,
Tears, and Sweat; Their Finest Hour; Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor
Address
11/9 World War IIWorld War II, at history.com
A Renaissance of Wonder: 1950-1960
11/12 ExistentialismAlbert Camus, The Stranger, Part II, Chapter V
11/14 The Cold WarHarry S. Truman, The Truman Doctrine; Winston Churchill,
The Iron Curtain; Joseph Welch and Joseph McCarthy, Have You No Decency?;
Nikita Khrushchev, The Cult of the Individual
11/16 Art and Photography 1940-1960
The Murmur of the Absolute: 1960-1970
11/19 Art and Photography 1960-1990

11/26 Moral ConfusionJorge Luis Borges, The Garden of the Forking Paths
11/28 The 1960sJohn F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address; I Am a Berliner; The Cuban
Missile Crisis; Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream; Lyndon Baines
Johnson, The Great Society
11/30 Reviving LiberalismJohn Rawls, Justice as Fairness; Mario Cuomo,
Keynote Address
No Other End of the World Will There Be: 1970-2000
12/3 Freedom in TheoryRonald Reagan, A Time for Choosing; First Inaugural
Address; Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
12/5 Freedom in PracticeMargaret Thatcher, The Ladys Not for Turning; Ronald
Reagan, Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Association of
Evangelicals; Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate; Elie Wiesel, The Perils of
Indifference
12/7 Final Exam Review
12/12 Final Exam, 9am12noon
To download PowerPoint slides used in class, click on the date of the class.

Requirements
Midterm and final exams. These exams will each consist of 80 multiple-choice
questions. You may not use books or notes. The midterm will take place in class on
Wednesday, October 12. The final will be held on Wednesday, December 12 from
9:00am to 12:00noon in our usual classroom. Each exam is worth 25% of the final
grade.
Reaction papers: Starting on September 12, you will have opportunities to turn in onepage reaction papers to the assigned readings. Here are the rules:
1. Your paper must be about one specific reading assigned for the course and starred
(*) on the syllabus.
2. You must send your paper to your TA before the class covering that reading. Papers
submitted once class begins will not count.
3. The papers must be your own work. You must not use material from anyone else
without citing the source. That includes Wikipedia and other online sources. The best
way to follow this rule is to read the works yourself and write your own reactions, not
someone elses.
4. The best five of these papers will count.
5. The papers must have the following format:
a. The main ideas the author is trying to communicate;
b. The key quotation, capturing the most important move or idea;
b. Some questions you have about those ideas;

c. Some objections you would like to raise to those ideas, or additional support
you would like to provide.
Each paper will be worth 5% of the final grade. Together, then, these papers will be
worth 25% of the final grade.
Substitute papers: You may write, to substitute for one of the above reaction papers,
1. A lecture paper: a reaction to an event you attend in the University Lecture Series.
(Due October 31.)
2. An art paper: a reaction to a twentieth-century artwork found on this campus (e.g., at
the Blanton Museum or the Humanities Research Center). (Due October 31.)
Research paper: You must write a three-to-five page (roughly 1000 word) research
paper on a particular artist, author, work, or historical figure significant in twentiethcentury art, history, literature, philosophy, or photography, due at noon on December 8
and counting 15% of your final grade. Your paper must refer to at least three sources
other than encyclopedia articles, including at least one book and at least one scholarly
article. It must also have a thesisa conclusion for which you are arguing. Here is a list
of suggested topics, but you are free to go beyond that list.
Please submit all papers by email to your discussion section leader. Do not use
Blackboard, and do not send them to Professor Bonevac or Professor Flukinger. They
are easily confused.
Attendance and participation in discussion sections, 10%.
Outline of Reaction Papers
I. Main ideas the author is trying to communicate
II. Key Quotation, capturing the most important move or idea
III. Questions you have about those ideas
IV. Objections you would like to raise to those ideas, or additional support you would
like to provide.
Our Grading Criteria
Intelligibility. Can we understand what youre trying to say?
Clarity. Is your paper clear? Do you express your points with precision?
Understanding. Do you understand the writers and the issues well?
Support. Do you support what you say with reasons and arguments?
Depth. Do you get at the heart of the issues? Or does your paper show only a
superficial understanding?

Policies
The grading system for this course uses pluses and minuses.
Out of respect for your fellow students, please do not use cell phones in class.
Your papers must be your own work. You must not use material without citing your
sources.
University of Texas Honor Code
The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom,
leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the university is
expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect
toward peers and community.
Religious Holidays
Religious holidays will be respected in accordance with University policy.
Disabilities
Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the
Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with
Disabilities, 471-6259 (voice) or 232-2937 (video phone).
Important Dates
9/4 Last day of the official add/drop period; after this date, changes in registration
require the approval of the department chair and usually the students dean.
9/14 Twelfth class day; this is the date the official enrollment count is taken. Last day an
undergraduate student may add a class except for rare and extenuating circumstances.
Last day to drop a class for a possible refund.
11/6 Last day an undergraduate student may, with the deans approval, withdraw from
the University or drop a class except for urgent and substantiated, nonacademic
reasons. Last day an undergraduate student may change registration in a class to or
from the pass/fail basis. Last day to apply for an undergraduate degree.

The Professors
Daniel Bonevac is Professor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin. His
book Reduction in the Abstract Sciences (1982) received the Johnsonian Prize from
The Journal of Philosophy. The author of five books and editor or co-editor of three
others, Professor Bonevac's articles include Against Conditional Obligation (Nos),
"Sellars v. the Given" (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research), "Reflection
Without Equilibrium," (Journal of Philosophy), "Free Choice Permission Is Strong
Permission" (Synthese, with Nicholas Asher), "The Conditional Fallacy," (Philosophical
Review, with Josh Dever and David Sosa), The Counterexample Fallacy (Mind, also
with Dever and Sosa), and The Argument from Miracles and Two Theories of
Analogical Predication (Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Religion).
Office: WAG 403. Phone: 232-4333. Email: bonevac@austin.utexas.edu. Office Hours:
MWF 12-1; after class on Mondays.
Roy Flukinger is Senior Research Curator of Photography at the Harry Ransom
Humanities Research Center, where he is currently works with the development,
administration and application of the collections. Author or co-author of twenty books
and numerous articles, he continues to lecture and publish extensively in such fields as
regional, cultural and contemporary photography, the history of art and photography,
and film. He has produced over fifty exhibitions ranging from classical photohistory to
contemporary photography, and from photographers' retrospectives to American/
regional/Texas photography. He serves as juror, reviewer and evaluator for
contemporary photographic events, institutions, and support organizations, and helps to
find and develop acquisitions for the HRHRC Photography Department.
Office: HRC 6.204. Phone: 471-6793. Email: fluke@mail.utexas.edu. Office Hours: by
appointment.

Discussion Sections
64285 F 900 to 1000a, SZB 240
64295 F 1000 to 1100a, SZB 240
64305 F 1100 to 1200p, SZB 240

64290 F 900 to 1000a, SZB 284

64300 F 1000 to 1100a, SZB 284
64310 F 1100 to 1200p, SZB 284