Contemporary Civilization @ Reunion 2020
Event details
'The history of the idea of 'cultural' sickness: CC texts as cure and prevention.'
Thinkers from the before the time of the ancient Greeks have used the concepts of sickness and health to evaluate not just the quality of life or well-being of the individual, but the ways in which wider culture can either advance or hinder the ability to achieve a well-lived life. As such, these concepts have been used in a normative way or in a way which does not simply describe the features of physiological sickness, but deals with our most fundamental assumptions about the meaning of life and death. This class, led by Ruairidh Macleod, will examine how CC authors such as Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud have used these wider notions of sickness, disease and health to evaluate and examine cultural conditions in particular times and places, and to formulate written theories and accounts designed to remedy or address the conditions of cultural sickness and malaise.
View the full Reunion 2020 schedule.
