Friday, June 03, 2011

Fill in the Blank: Whom Should We Be Reading?

The department has launched a new class we call "Reading _________," where the blank is filled in with the name of someone who is not considered part of the standard philosophical canon, but whose writings hold deep interest in terms of the history of ideas. Last year, I had a seminar reading Darwin and a colleague has done it with the works of Gandhi. Next year, I'll be doing it with Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, founding fathers of sociology. What other figures can you think of whom we don't usually consider to be philosophers, but would be fun to study philosophically?