HIEU 3802

Megill is a genius, there is no denying that. HOWEVER my biggest regret in college is taking this class and I come back a year later to write a review warning others as I think I saw it being offered again next Spring on SIS. He knows everything about everything for sure, but he is disorganized mess. His lectures are fascinating but stressful and his feedback is less than helpful on most occasions (He straight up wrote "bad" on one of my reading responses). To get any real assistance from him you need to go to office hours, which can be intimidating since he is quite intimidating himself. If you are a student that appreciates structure, do NOT take this class. I really struggled to keep up with his lectures as he talks so fast and so excitedly without a powerpoint or notes to orient him. I would have loved this class as an optional lecture series or something like that, but to take this for a grade was not enjoyable and I am lucky I got a B.

Okay. enough good general reviews about how great this class and megill are. Lemme just say this, I absolutely love it when Megill sneaks in witty sarcasms and ironies about the authors. You'd see him lean back into his chair--yes, covid times, sitting--and put on that mysterious--sarcastic? Ironic?-- smile, and then calmly roast someone--the most vivid one I remember was his imaginary conversation with Freud. Gosh. Brilliant, entertaining delivery! You'd want to download the mp3 of his lectures to listen for entertainment--well at least I did.

This is a philosophy (specifically metaphysics/epistemology) course masquerading as a history course. Tough readings, brilliant professor. Don't listen to the whiners below -- Megill is very helpful and approachable during office hours. You will learn a LOT and will likely change your worldview on the concepts of subjectivity/objectivity, history, progress, rationality, etc.

So overrated. You'll learn a lot, but probably at the cost of your GPA. Megill is prideful and never willing to admit that he's wrong. Brilliant man but way too harsh of a grader.

so this class was lowkey hard. megill says nietzsche is dynamite but hes also lowkey dynamite lol. there was a decent bit of reading, and Megill makes some claims that r outright inconsistent with the typical understanding of the guy's philosophy. erm u have to try keep up with the lectures n the readings, and even tho Megill will be like dont regurgitate everything, ultimately his class is regurgitating everything he says in lectures or his books lmao. Megill himself is a cool guy, abit obnoxious n dismissive in lectures but cool in office hours. bc of all the bs that i had to deal with through this class, most of the readings for my other classes felt quite easy now lol, so take if u wanna improve ur crit-reading skills by like x 5000

You should not take this course if you don't enjoy reading or philosophy. This is essentially a course in the history of philosophy in Europe, more specifically the collapse of idealism through the 19/20th centuries. This is not a typical history class. It emphasizes reading philosophers and thinkers like Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Kant, Lyell, Paley, etc. Megill's style is also not for everybody. He is brilliant, which means he can come off as arrogant or pretentious. The level of ideas dealt with in this course are very complex and nuanced, and Megill will not sugarcoat it when you're wrong.

That being said, I loved this course. Megill knows his stuff, and I found him hilarious (others may not). The course is incredibly interested, and basically made me take philosophy seriously as a discipline. It will challenge a lot of your preconceptions about what certain thinkers said or thought, and give you a great deal of insight into intellectual history. It was difficult to grapple with the material, but incredibly rewarding. For those interested in the material, I would highly recommend as a valuable and fun course.

Assignments consist of readings weekly, then one "think question" per week (he stops assigning them halfway through the semester because he gets lazy). TQs are basically reading questions graded for completion, not a huge burden (easy to get the completion grade even though your answer will almost always be wrong). The paper is 6 pages single spaced on a question that you choose yourself; I thought it was not graded that harshly, as long as you show you've read the material and understood it somewhat. The midterm and final are both essay based, with short and long essay questions. The final had quote IDs. Grade is based on final and the paper; the midterm is graded more harshly but also basically has no effect on your grade.

Overall, take this course. It is unique and will give you a lot.

First of all, the professor is incendiary. He's bouncing off the wall, hair wild, espousing grand conjectures. To see a professor, PhD and all, jump as high as he can to reach some upper-level hanging fruit is terrific. It's subjective, he's the authority, there's little room to complain, but it's a thrill to engage with. But every so often, the feeling creeps up that Megill may be biting off more than he can chew. Perhaps its the inevitably too-short time, and usual discontinuities between lectures, (it's topical, there's no set structure to learning in this class as one would find in Calc II, Intro Bio, or even in some survey history classes) but he will fail to support some grand, world-defining idea that he tries to drag form Nietzsche or Freud.
Another note about the professor: it's entirely conceivable to go through the whole course and wind up learning more about [post]modernism by observing Megill than through listening to Megill. His office opens like a Michael Gondry/Darren Aronofsky film, cluttered stochastically, with probably 350 books and manuscripts rife with annotations. He may have four or five editions/translations of the same text, stretching from Plato to German volumes probably talking about avian ontologies or something. Course documents too, convey a layering upon layering. Through multiple iterations, Megill exhibits FULL use of formatting possible in the digital age. Emails can themselves be exercises in hermeneutics. But overall, a treat, and if nothing else, fascinating.
Readings were dense. Always dense. And if they weren't dense, they commanded levels of attention that made them denser. But every so often, everything just clicked, and some of the phenomena in the world beyond the texts were finally made legible by words on these pages. The class siphoned time from my others, which was a pain, but I think may have been necessary. To truly take this class is to handle not only the texts, but the assumptions and context the thinkers were in when they made their contributions. Megill provides ample resources on Collab to understand where people were coming from.
This course, in that inflated, reversible way that has occurred every semester here, has completely altered the way I approach science, politics, other people, and myself. I encountered Plato, Mill, and Marx last year, fully buying into rationality and reason. Reading Nietzsche felt like hurtling forth on a train when all the sudden Wile. E. Coyote detonates the track ahead of you. What used to feel safe, secure, and inevitably progressive now leads nowhere. If truly immersed in, this class will force revaluations, of a college degree, of political affiliations, of relationships, and it will definitely enhance bullshit-detecting capabilities. It's hard, it requires a lot of time, and it will drag if not kept up with. But Megill cares about the content, it can totally jackhammer into the bedrock of one's intellectual foundation. If nothing else, this class overviews intellectual history Enlightenment through the 1930s, and will increase the academic style and esotericity of a student five-fold. But it can be much more.

I could have written an article about how amazing this class was for me. Professor Megill is so knowledgeable and brilliant that taking a single class from him (and studying studiously) has helped me to learn so much more as compared to other classes: some of the most provocative and almost life-changing (especially Nietzsche, IMO) ideas in modern history are brought up and discussed in depth (through several very intelligent conceptualizations he offers). Expect to work very diligently but this has been the most intellectually fulfilling class at U.Va. that I've ever taken. He also helps you throughout the entire semester and grading is very fair if you do study. Highly recommended for anyone genuinely interested in philosophy, history of ideas, or liberal arts in general.

Brilliant professor. He's easily the best I've had at UVA. He's available a ton and encourages everyone to come talk with him. The topic of the class and readings are all very fulfilling. I'm coming away from this class with many of my views changed and expanded upon. Really can't recommend this class enough.

Megill is brilliant. The material is extremely tough. Class was rewarding, as it will really challenges your thinking and your perspective on just about everything. Much much more philosophical than any other history class I have taken, so take this class only if you're ready for a new way of approaching history. Instead of looking at events, you'll be looking at different views of philosophy that emerged around the turn of the century.

This course is incredibly difficult, but super informative. Don't take it if you're looking for an easy A, but absolutely take it if you want to learn a ton about a broad range of topics. Megill is brilliant.

Interesting material. Intimidating but certainly feasible if you follow Megill's instructions.

This was the greatest class I ever took. It was a true scholastic experience.

Reading is difficult, but I thought the class was worthwhile.

This is one of the best classes I've taken at UVA. The reading can be remarkably opaque (Heidegger and sometimes Nietzsche seem as if they're from another planet), but the assignments are generally short. And more importantly, Megill puts it all together in his terrific, if occasionally rambling lectures. Really, my biggest complaint is that the course is only a semester long.

This was a hard class, but it was worth it. I took it as a first year and had to work really, really hard, but it made me think like a college student. The TA, Nick, was great! I don't know how I would have gotten through without him. Megill is really interesting and fun to listen to in class.