Course level: Graduate

Spring 2023
Johns Hopkins University

Course Description:

This course examines theories of the self and self-formation in Immanuel Kant and selected post-Kantian thinkers in the German tradition, including Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Wilhelm Dilthey. The course will focus on how knowing oneself and becoming oneself are mutually dependent. For each thinker, we will discuss their accounts of self-consciousness and self-understanding as well as the conditions for forming a moral character. Emphasis will be placed on close reading of the original texts, historically informed interpretation, and systematic argumentation.