Contemporary Civilizations is a year long seminar based course offered by Columbia University. It was first introduced after the first World War to introduce problems of the present day to students. Over the course of this year, students read several texts written by famous and/or influential philsophers that hold several diverse opinions on a variety of different subjects like morality. The idea is that students, after being exposed to these texts, have a deeper understanding of the world around them from a political/social/moral and religious perspective. This enables them to make well thought out decisions about the beliefs they hold and to contribute to the world for the better. More information on this course can be found at this link The course is required for all Columbia College students and serves as a potential options for Columbia Engineering students looking to fulfill their liberal arts requirements.
As part of my section of Contemporary Civilizations course, we had to complete a final project. I wanted to take this as an opportunity to combine the humanities with my STEM background and as a result this website exists as a medium for my final project.
The authors covered on this website are all the main authors that each CC section covers, these authors were chosen due to their vast contributions to their particular field, whether it is economics, politics, or general philsophy. Instructors are also encouraged to include additional texts to add some flavor to the CC syllabus, for sake of brevity those authors and works are omitted unless tied specifically to an author who is already being discussed (Adam Smith for example also wrote a work titled: "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" which was read within my section) The syllabus goes under review every now and again to make revisions but the syllabus is reasonably stable. This site focuses specifically on the works and authors of the second semester of CC.
Just like their respective authors these works represent a vast array of different ideas and viewpoints across a variety of subjects, these works were selected and placed on the main CC syllabus as it was determined that they did a good job of making their ideas clear and/or were representative of a particular fragment of time influenced by current events. This site focuses specifically on the works and authors of the second semester of CC.