Seminar, three hours. German philosophical tradition is one of most influential, difficult, and problematic Western world has known. Beginning with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and continuing through Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger to Arendt and thinkers of Frankfurt school, German philosophers have explored, more deeply and rigorously than any other Western thinkers, nature and limits (if any) of human mental activity. Results have been basic to social, political, and aesthetic theory as well as to philosophy itself. Exploration of thought of one member of that tradition by concentrating yearly on one exemplary text. Letter grading.