Continental Philosophy

Right after WWII a new way of living emerges in France: Existentialism. Existentialism becomes the name for the feeling of the Freedom recovered after France occupation by Germany. But more than a simple revolution in customs it lies on a new metaphysics of the human experience. This new metaphysics of Human's finitude is popularized by Sartre's manifesto: "Existentialism is a Humanism". The main goal of this course will be to introduce students to French Existentialism in taking as a center of our investigation Sartre's philosophy. We will try to clarify its main origins and concepts in insisting first on the meaning of the philosophical conflict between Christian Existentialism (inspired by Kierkegaard) and Atheist Existentialism (inspired by Feuerbach and Kojeve). We will also insist on the importance of Heidegger for the formation of the French Existentialism. Once this background clarified we will focus on Sartre's philosophy and on Sartre's relations to literature throughout Sartre's art of portraying from an existentialist point of view and methodology, some major French writers like Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Genet and Flaubert. These investigations will give us a privileged key in order to make sense of the Existentialism fundamental claim following which Human life must be understood as an existential engagement towards the Impossible goal of being God. From an existentialist point of view as a matter of fact: God is no longer the principle of existence (as it is in Classical Metaphysics and Theology) but the Goal that finite existence tries to embody in vain.

We propose here a cursive reading of Sartre's masterpiece of 1943, explaining the whole project of Sartre's phenomenological ontology. For that we will focus on his polemical relation to German Idealism (mostly Hegel) and to German Phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger) in order to clarify the meaning of notions that Sartre inherits from these two traditions like in-itself, for-itself, intentionality, existence, selfhood, pre-reflexive consciousness, negativity, nothingness etc. (B)

This course will be devoted to the reading of texts of Sartre. Our exploration will elucidate what Sartre names "Existential Psychoanalysis". In order to have an understanding of what is at stake under this concept, we will first explore its role in the economy of Sartre's ontology (Being and Nothingness and Question of Method). In a second step, we will try to explore the several ways in which Sartre is going to put into practice the main principles of his psychoanalytical method, through the readings of his essays on Literature, on Baudelaire, Genet, Flaubert and others.

This course centers on a close reading of the first volume of Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, with some attention to his writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. How should a history of sexuality take into account scientific theories, social relations of power, and different experiences of the self? We discuss the contrasting descriptions and conceptions of sexual behavior before and after the emergence of a science of sexuality. Other writers influenced by and critical of Foucault are also discussed.

Topic: What is Moral Skepticism? (Instructor: C. Kirwin)

Philosophical investigations of morality and ethics are often haunted by the shadowy figure of the ‘moral skeptic’. Who is this person, and what does he want from us? In fact, there seem to be many different kinds of ‘moral skeptic’, and a clear and comprehensive account of the various different forms of skeptical challenge does not yet exist. In this course, we’ll investigate a number of different doubts about and challenges to morality and ethics. We shall read texts from Plato and Nietzsche, as well as more recent authors such as Susan Wolf and Bernard Williams, to helps us consider the classical skeptical question – why should I be moral? We shall then turn to a more recent incarnation of skepticism, in the form of meta-ethical debates concerning whether or not there are such things as moral facts or properties in the first place, and if so, whether they are independent of our minds. In analyzing all of these texts, we will have in mind three philosophical goals: 1. We shall be attempting to develop a sort of taxonomy of moral skepticisms: we shall try to determine how many different sorts of challenges are being raised, and whether some collapse into others (or perhaps into incoherence). 2. We shall be assessing the relative significance of the different sorts of skeptical challenge: which skeptics pose threats that a moral theory must be able to answer if it is to be successful? Are there any skeptics that we need not answer? Does the internal incoherence of a particular skeptical ‘position’ mean that we can ignore it, or do we still have philosophical work to do in responding to the challenge? 3. We shall try to develop a picture of what sort of answer might be appropriate for each of our various kinds of skeptic. Would it help, for example, to be able to show that morality is in my own interest? Or could we see off certain skeptics by showing morality to be grounded in my autonomy? Should we instead reject the underlying assumptions that lead skeptics to their doubts in the first place? Or is the skeptic really in need of a kind of therapy, rather than philosophical engagement? At the end of the course, we may not yet be able to answer the moral skeptics that trouble us most, but we should at least have a clearer idea of the nature of the challenge we face, and of where we might look to start constructing such an answer.

Topic: Self Knowledge and Knowledge of Others (instructor: R. O'Connell) Philosophers have long been concerned with understanding the nature of - and even expanding the reach of - self-knowledge. What is it to know oneself, or to be self-conscious? What is the value of self-knowledge? Equally important, though, is the nature of our knowledge of others. To what extent can I know another’s mind? What kind of impingements does another person’s thought make upon my own? In this course we shall investigate the relation between these two kinds of knowledge. We shall attempt to unfold of both (i) their inter-dependence, and (ii) their source in a common ‘principle’: rational self-consciousness. To this end we will be confronting such topics as first person authority, the problem of other minds, individual self-consciousness, second-person thought, the social nature of thought and language. We shall draw both on contemporary work as well as readings from the tradition.

Topic: Kant and Existentialism (Instructor: F. Russell) In this course we will first analyze Kant’s conception of autonomy and then will see how this concept was taken up and transformed by two key philosophers in the existentialist tradition (Nietzsche and de Beauvoir).  Kant thought that the only thing that is good without qualification is the good will, and that the good will is the free or autonomous will: the will that gives itself its own laws.  Though many existentialist philosophers claimed to reject Kant’s moral philosophy, in many ways they can be read as developing and radicalizing some version of his idea of autonomy.  In this course we will read Kant, Nietzsche, and de Beauvoir, in order to grapple with the following questions: how should we understand ‘autonomy’ and what is its value?  Just how free is the will, and how radical is this freedom?  What, if anything, should constrain my freedom and/or my conception of right and wrong?  What role do material conditions or relations with other people play in either constraining or conditioning this freedom?  The aim of the course is a) to foster an understanding of Kant’s practical philosophy, and in particular his concept of autonomy; b) to understand how the idea of autonomy is taken up and transformed in existentialist philosophy; and c) to examine what kind of ethics an “ethics of autonomy” can provide.

Topic: What is Moral Skepticism? (Instructor: C. Kirwin)
Philosophical investigations of morality and ethics are often haunted by the shadowy figure of the ‘moral skeptic’. Who is this person, and what does he want from us? In fact, there seem to be many different kinds of ‘moral skeptic’, and a clear and comprehensive account of the various different forms of skeptical challenge does not yet exist. In this course, we’ll investigate a number of different doubts about and challenges to morality and ethics. We shall read texts from Plato and Nietzsche, as well as more recent authors such as Susan Wolf and Bernard Williams, to helps us consider the classical skeptical question – why should I be moral? We shall then turn to a more recent incarnation of skepticism, in the form of meta-ethical debates concerning whether or not there are such things as moral facts or properties in the first place, and if so, whether they are independent of our minds. In analyzing all of these texts, we will have in mind three philosophical goals: 1. We shall be attempting to develop a sort of taxonomy of moral skepticisms: we shall try to determine how many different sorts of challenges are being raised, and whether some collapse into others (or perhaps into incoherence). 2. We shall be assessing the relative significance of the different sorts of skeptical challenge: which skeptics pose threats that a moral theory must be able to answer if it is to be successful? Are there any skeptics that we need not answer? Does the internal incoherence of a particular skeptical ‘position’ mean that we can ignore it, or do we still have philosophical work to do in responding to the challenge? 3. We shall try to develop a picture of what sort of answer might be appropriate for each of our various kinds of skeptic. Would it help, for example, to be able to show that morality is in my own interest? Or could we see off certain skeptics by showing morality to be grounded in my autonomy? Should we instead reject the underlying assumptions that lead skeptics to their doubts in the first place? Or is the skeptic really in need of a kind of therapy, rather than philosophical engagement? At the end of the course, we may not yet be able to answer the moral skeptics that trouble us most, but we should at least have a clearer idea of the nature of the challenge we face, and of where we might look to start constructing such an answer.

Topic: Self Knowledge and Knowledge of Others (instructor: R. O'Connell)

Philosophers have long been concerned with understanding the nature of - and even expanding the reach of - self-knowledge. What is it to know oneself, or to be self-conscious? What is the value of self-knowledge? Equally important, though, is the nature of our knowledge of others. To what extent can I know another’s mind? What kind of impingements does another person’s thought make upon my own? In this course we shall investigate the relation between these two kinds of knowledge. We shall attempt to unfold of both (i) their inter-dependence, and (ii) their source in a common ‘principle’: rational self-consciousness. To this end we will be confronting such topics as first person authority, the problem of other minds, individual self-consciousness, second-person thought, the social nature of thought and language. We shall draw both on contemporary work as well as readings from the tradition.

Topic: Kant and Existentialism (Instructor: F. Russell)

In this course we will first analyze Kant’s conception of autonomy and then will see how this concept was taken up and transformed by two key philosophers in the existentialist tradition (Nietzsche and de Beauvoir).  Kant thought that the only thing that is good without qualification is the good will, and that the good will is the free or autonomous will: the will that gives itself its own laws.  Though many existentialist philosophers claimed to reject Kant’s moral philosophy, in many ways they can be read as developing and radicalizing some version of his idea of autonomy.  In this course we will read Kant, Nietzsche, and de Beauvoir, in order to grapple with the following questions: how should we understand ‘autonomy’ and what is its value?  Just how free is the will, and how radical is this freedom?  What, if anything, should constrain my freedom and/or my conception of right and wrong?  What role do material conditions or relations with other people play in either constraining or conditioning this freedom?  The aim of the course is a) to foster an understanding of Kant’s practical philosophy, and in particular his concept of autonomy; b) to understand how the idea of autonomy is taken up and transformed in existentialist philosophy; and c) to examine what kind of ethics an “ethics of autonomy” can provide.

This seminar will be a close reading of Kierkegaard's text, written under the pseudonym of "Johannes Climacus".  Among the topics to be discussed are: the nature and task of subjectivity, what it is for subjectivity to be truth, irony and humor, what it is for a communication to be successful, ethical versus religious outlooks, the peculiar requirements of being a Christian.

This seminar will be devoted mostly to the reading of texts of Sartre. Our goal will be to try to define the meaning of Sartre’s project of elaborating an existential psychoanalysis. In what sense can it be an alternative to Freudian or Lacanian psychoanalysis? We will try to follow Sartre in the elaboration of such a project in reading texts in which Sartre develops an existential psychoanalysis of French writers like Baudelaire, Genet and Flaubert.

This course centers on a close reading of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, with some attention to his writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. How should a history of sexuality take into account scientific theories, social relations of power, and different experiences of the self? We discuss the contrasting descriptions and conceptions of sexual behavior before and after the emergence of a science of sexuality. Other writers influenced by and critical of Foucault are also discussed.

Topic: Aristotle’s Physics (instructor: A. Brooks)

By Aristotle’s time, the intelligibility (and even the possibility) of a natural world had come under widespread philosophical attack. Aristotle is the first philosopher to defend the science of nature against these attacks, and at the same time the first philosopher to develop a systematic understanding of change and the natural world. This course is a reading of selections from Aristotle’s Physics, with the aim of touchng on all of its major themes, and investigating in depth some of Aristotle’s most important theses. Our reading of the Physics will be structured around four challenges to the possibility of a natural science: the Eleatic dilemma, Zeno’s puzzles about change, Plato’s ‘moment of change’ problem, and the problem of how causal chains can terminate. We will work out the details of Aristotle’s solutions to these problems, with particular attention to how they are related, and how his solutions contribute to his conception of nature.

Topic: Nietzsche On Skepticism, Nihilism, and the Affirmation of Life (instructor: R. Eichorn) Nietzsche famously declared that he “distrust[s] all systematizers... The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” This has not deterred any number of commentators from trying to find some kind of philosophical system in what Alexander Nehamas has referred to as the “dazzling obscurity” of Nietzsche’s texts. In this course, we will explore the idea that the unity of Nietzsche’s thought (to the extent that it is unified) derives not from a philosophical doctrine or principle (such as the will to power), nor from a system built up of such doctrines or principles, but rather from a preoccupation with a set of interrelated cultural and existential crises. The catch-all term for these crises is nihilism. In the first half of the course, we will explore nihilism historically, by tracing Nietzsche’s account of (a) the socio-evolutionary emergence of the ‘human,’ (b) the rise of philosophy and Judeo–Christianity, and finally (c) the triumph of what Nietzsche calls the ‘ascetic ideal.’ In the second half of the course, we will explore the ambivalent place of philosophical skepticism in Nietzsche’s thought, specifically, its role as both a symptom of and the cure for nihilism—as both a negation and an affirmation of life.

Topic: Gilles Deleuze: Difference and Repetition (instructor: A. Werner) There is an obvious fact which has played an important role in philosophy: the fact that when we think about the world, it is indeed the world which figures in our thoughts. Many philosophers – for example, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John McDowell – claim that making sense of this fact involves appealing to the irreducibly conceptual structure of thought. According to these philosophers, that the order of thinking and the order of the world are in some important sense the same is spelled out at the most fundamental level in terms of our ability to think about the world using concepts. Because of this, each of them attempts to overcome the skepticism-inducing idea of a sub-conceptual interface between thought and the world it thinks about. Like many other philosophers, Gilles Deleuze also aims to make sense of the fact that the order of thinking and the order of the world are the same. However, unlike the philosophers mentioned in the previous paragraph, he seeks to do so precisely by identifying a sub-conceptual realm which appears as a pre-conceptual element of thought and a non-conceptualizable element of the world. The pre-conceptual element of thought which he identifies is not some kind of skepticism-inducing interface between the world and our thinking of it: rather, it is one side of a sub-conceptual realm which is common to both thought and the world. Deleuze's work is immensely exciting because he agrees with the philosophers mentioned above that positing a sub-conceptual interface between thought and the world is philosophically disastrous, while nevertheless affirming that there is a philosophical explanation of the common origin of the structure of thought and the world which appeals to the sub-conceptual. A fascinating consequence which he draws is that thought and the will are not as such aimed at the true/the good. Thought and the will can aim at the true/the good, but this is not how they are most fundamentally constituted. The result is an a priori account of both the actuality and the necessity of false thoughts and bad actions. We will spend the course reading Deleuze's book Difference and Repetition in the hopes of understanding his arguments for the sub-conceptual and for the rejection of the image of thought and the will as true/good. To assist us in this project, we will occasionally draw upon secondary literature (from authors like Levi Bryant, Henry Somers-Hall, and Paul Patton) and we will also occasionally read selections from other writings by Deleuze (especially The Logic of Sense). Questions we will explore include: Are there sub-conceptual differences and repetitions? Are the concepts of difference and repetition intelligible independently of an account of conceptual structure? Can they be used to ground an account of thought's conceptual structure? Does the attempt to find a sub-conceptual element of thought and the world devolve into skepticism? Does Deleuze want us to give up on the projects of thinking true thoughts and performing good actions? If not, how are we able to think truly and act well on his view? Finally, at the end of the course we will consider Deleuze's view of philosophy by looking at selections from the book What is Philosophy? (by Deleuze and Felix Guattari). One of the first things that strikes any reader of Deleuze is how fluid his terminology and arguments appear to be. This fluidity seems to be in some kind of important relationship to his philosophical theory, which attempts to explain the pre-conceptual fluidity of thought and the world. Nevertheless, his work is full of arguments which employ concepts. If philosophy is supposed to be in contact with a sub-conceptual realm, how should we evaluate it? What kind of argumentative resources should it draw upon? What is its task? A note about philosophical pre-requisites: Deleuze's writing is difficult, principally because he draws on many different sources in D&R (both philosophical – Duns Scotus, Kant, Nietzsche, etc. – and non-philosophical – different novelists, painters, biologists, and mathematicians, as well as Freud, Tarde, Saussure, etc.). This course will not presuppose any prior knowledge of the philosophical and non-philosophical traditions from which Deleuze draws, or any prior knowledge of the philosophical terrain (France in the 60's) in which Deleuze wrote. Antecedent familiarity with the traditions Deleuze is in dialogue with may allows students to explore connections between Deleuze's work and the work of others more fully, but it is neither necessary nor expected. The content of the course only presupposes an interest in the philosophical project of explaining the relationship between mind and world.