https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/PHIL6497?type=COREDehumanization happens when people are depicted, regarded, or treated as not human or less human. Take the civilians that are tortured, raped or killed in the shameful line-up of wars and violent conflicts that we have stockpiled over historical time, with no end in sight. Take that homeless people, sick people, refugees or those deemed 'racially inferior' are often treated in a far from respectful manner, likened to bacteria, vermin or waste, and treated alike. Take the age-old view that women are only a 'second' sex (and gender) with all the consequences this view has had for the oppression and the violence women have had to face. Take abusive work relations as part of which people are treated as exploitable machines. These are all paradigmatic examples of dehumanization occurring as part of our contemporary social and political world. Scholars have addressed dehumanization since Greek Antiquity (even though often without using the word which has a rather recent prevalence). This course focuses on how understanding dehumanization has developed in social and political thought since the early reactions to the Holocaust and other NS-atrocities. This course thus concerns post-WW2 approaches to dehumanization.In addition, to studying the by-now classic contributions of authors from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., Hannah Arendt), we will discuss different forms of dehumanization (e.g., animalization, demonization or objectification) and contemporary issues related to the phenomenon, taking historical, philosophical and empirical issues into account (e.g., dehumanization before and during the Columbian exchange, how it figures in accounting for the Holocaust and other genocidal activities, how it figures in misogyny, racism, social exclusion, outgroup bias, mind attribution, or one's imagination of one's own future self, and how it relates to ideology, stereotypes, social roles, political propaganda, etc.)