What Happened to
Truth?
Osher Course
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
John
Hooker, Study leader
10:45 am – 12:15 pm
3 Wednesdays, 8, 15, 22 April 2026
Cyert Hall, Osher Room B
Course
description Study leader bio
Schedule
Click the links to view or download slides
(as pdf files) used in class.
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Topics |
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Week 1 |
Rise of the
Enlightenment •
Bacon,
Hobbes, Locke, Jefferson, Franklin, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Burke,
Wollstonecraft •
The
American experiment |
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Week 2 |
Decline of Enlightenment Values
•
French Revolution •
Positivism, the Vienna Circle,
Wittgenstein •
Modern science and religious
fundamentalism •
Adorno, Horkheimer, Arendt, and
the Holocaust |
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Week 3 |
Postmodernism and Abandonment of
Truth •
Foucault, Baudelaire, Derrida,
Lyotard, Rorty •
Identity politics, Habermas and
critical race theory •
Science denialism and
normalization of lies Epilogue: A Return to Enlightenment? |