SUBJECTIVITY AND ITS VICISSITUDES: Descartes to Lévinas
Spring Semester 2007 Graduate Seminar
Dr. Thomas Carl Wall
Beginning from 1641 nearly all the metaphysical speculation of western philosophy (and nearly all para- and anti- philosophical discourse from critical theory to psychoanalysis to New Age obscurantism to Socio-Biology) has gradually congealed (either overtly or surreptitiously) around the vicissitudes of one single question: Is Man an illusion? Is there a properly human dimension, a specifically human realm of experience; is human existence radically distinct from nature? OR is human being an effect of (or subject to)…language, the chemistry of the brain, evolution, ideology, power relations, an unconscious, alterity, an obscure cosmological process, etc. In short: Is there a Subject of…experience, existence, history, politics, ethics, happiness, etc., and if there is, who is it (or he, or she, or we): a free, autonomous Agent? The Citizen? The Class? The Leader? The Person? The ethnic/national Group? The Self? Consciousness? Me?
In this course we shall read some of the chief texts that define lines of inquiry into this issue beginning with René Descartes’ audacious Meditations and ending with and Emmanuel Lévinas’ audacious questioning of the issue’s primacy in light of the Other.
As the material is often quite dense, we shall proceed in slow, explication du texte manner. The final grade will be based of classroom discussion and a research paper. For the final paper I ask you to examine one philosophical, para-philosophical, or anti-philosophical discourse not covered in class in light of our readings. For example, topics like “Is the Subject Sexed?” “The Return of René Descartes: Subjectivity in Zizek”, “The Notion of a ‘Cosmopolitan Citizen’”, “A Critique of the Notion of the ‘Death of Man’ in Foucault”, “The Lacanian Subject”, “Can/Must There Be an Ecological Subject?” “The Subject of Religion”, “This Whole Seminar Was Pointless: Darwin and the Death of Western Philosophy!” or so forth. (Before you proceed with your final paper, please write a précis for my approval.)
Readings (in order of study):
René Descartes. Meditations On First Philosophy. (From Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings. Translated by Desmond M. Clarke. London: Penguin Books, 1998.)
David Hume. “Of the Immateriality of the Soul”. (From A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford Press, 1978.)
Immanuel Kant. “Paralogisms of Pure Reason”. (From Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965.)
G. W. F. Hegel. “Sense-Certainty”, “Perception”, and “Force and Understanding”. (From Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford Press, 1977.)
Edmund Husserl. The Paris Lectures. Translated by Peter Koestenbaum. The Hague: Martinus Nijoff Press, 1970.
Martin Heidegger. “The Thesis of Modern Ontology: The Basic Ways of Being Are the Being of Nature (Res Extensa) and the Being of Mind (Res Cogitans)”. (From The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.)
Emmanuel Lévinas. “Intentionality and Sensation” (From Discovering Existence with Husserl. Translated by Richard B. Cohen and Michael B. Smith. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998.); “Is Ontology Fundamental?” (From Basic Philosophical Writings. Translated by Peter Atterton, revised by Simon Critchley and Adriaan Peperzak. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.)
Spring Semester 2007 Graduate Seminar
Dr. Thomas Carl Wall
Beginning from 1641 nearly all the metaphysical speculation of western philosophy (and nearly all para- and anti- philosophical discourse from critical theory to psychoanalysis to New Age obscurantism to Socio-Biology) has gradually congealed (either overtly or surreptitiously) around the vicissitudes of one single question: Is Man an illusion? Is there a properly human dimension, a specifically human realm of experience; is human existence radically distinct from nature? OR is human being an effect of (or subject to)…language, the chemistry of the brain, evolution, ideology, power relations, an unconscious, alterity, an obscure cosmological process, etc. In short: Is there a Subject of…experience, existence, history, politics, ethics, happiness, etc., and if there is, who is it (or he, or she, or we): a free, autonomous Agent? The Citizen? The Class? The Leader? The Person? The ethnic/national Group? The Self? Consciousness? Me?
In this course we shall read some of the chief texts that define lines of inquiry into this issue beginning with René Descartes’ audacious Meditations and ending with and Emmanuel Lévinas’ audacious questioning of the issue’s primacy in light of the Other.
As the material is often quite dense, we shall proceed in slow, explication du texte manner. The final grade will be based of classroom discussion and a research paper. For the final paper I ask you to examine one philosophical, para-philosophical, or anti-philosophical discourse not covered in class in light of our readings. For example, topics like “Is the Subject Sexed?” “The Return of René Descartes: Subjectivity in Zizek”, “The Notion of a ‘Cosmopolitan Citizen’”, “A Critique of the Notion of the ‘Death of Man’ in Foucault”, “The Lacanian Subject”, “Can/Must There Be an Ecological Subject?” “The Subject of Religion”, “This Whole Seminar Was Pointless: Darwin and the Death of Western Philosophy!” or so forth. (Before you proceed with your final paper, please write a précis for my approval.)
Readings (in order of study):
René Descartes. Meditations On First Philosophy. (From Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings. Translated by Desmond M. Clarke. London: Penguin Books, 1998.)
David Hume. “Of the Immateriality of the Soul”. (From A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford Press, 1978.)
Immanuel Kant. “Paralogisms of Pure Reason”. (From Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965.)
G. W. F. Hegel. “Sense-Certainty”, “Perception”, and “Force and Understanding”. (From Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford Press, 1977.)
Edmund Husserl. The Paris Lectures. Translated by Peter Koestenbaum. The Hague: Martinus Nijoff Press, 1970.
Martin Heidegger. “The Thesis of Modern Ontology: The Basic Ways of Being Are the Being of Nature (Res Extensa) and the Being of Mind (Res Cogitans)”. (From The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.)
Emmanuel Lévinas. “Intentionality and Sensation” (From Discovering Existence with Husserl. Translated by Richard B. Cohen and Michael B. Smith. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998.); “Is Ontology Fundamental?” (From Basic Philosophical Writings. Translated by Peter Atterton, revised by Simon Critchley and Adriaan Peperzak. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.)
全站熱搜
留言列表
BIBLE 
