This course seeks to meet the needs of those who are interested in thinking about thinking as a trans-disciplinary intellectual task and a methodological approach of choice. We begin with the ancient Greek notion of nous and move on to investigate key concepts developed in the historical course of study of reasoning, apprehending, and rationality (e.g. “productive imagination”), considering the divisions imposed on the topic by professional disciplines examined side by side with contemporary studies about the mind of artificial reality (e.g., the “liquid” mind and the “absent” mind). The course will involve a critical rereading of selections from premodern and modern thinkers, including Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Adorno, Horkheimer, Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Kristeva, and Dennett, among others, along with discussion of provocative examples from fiction (e.g. Nabokov), film (e.g., Terrence Malick), theater (e.g., Beckett), and visual and acoustic media—to consider the pros and cons of thinking for oneself, of making judgments in disconnection and isolation vis-à-vis thinking conventionally and algorithmically while living as we are in an age of total distraction and conceptual disempowerment. Priority to enroll is given to Liberal Studies majors at the NSSR and in the BAMA program, but graduate students from all disciplines at the NSSR and The New School are also encouraged. A small quota of seats may be available to qualified seniors at Lang and those in the BAFA program, but the instructor’s permission is required.