Organized as a survey of texts and artifacts epitomizing core beliefs and practices typical of the modern world, even among contemporary critics of liberalism and capitalism, this seminar brings students with a primary interest in writing, publishing, and design together to explore a variety of themes and texts that epitomize some of the critical concerns of our age. A recurrent concern will be the paradox of trying to discern patterns in social interaction and history, and then, in accordance with these forms, to design a freer and more just society. Among the issues discussed are freedom and the ironies of institutional efforts to promote and protect freedom; emancipatory visions and the paradoxes of progress; the end of chattel slavery and European colonialism and the rise of subtle new forms of liberal subjugation; materialist views of human nature and the limits of rational freedom vis-à-vis animal instinct; the idea of the avant-garde and the picture of modern culture as a veiled civil war; the continuing challenges posed by power politics, total war, and totalitarianism. Among the authors read are Rousseau, Smith, Kant, Goethe, Olaudauh Equiano, Madison, Robespierre, Condorcet, Hegel, Marx, Emerson, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad, Freud, Darwin, Ernst Junger, Georg Lukacs, Marinetti, Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Kafka, Jean Amery, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault. The class in addition will be discussing various pieces of music and works of art, including several films. This course is open to BA/MA students; please email the instructor for permission to register.