PHIL 426 Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy Fall 2012
Course #49451R MW 3:30-4:45 MHP 105
Professor Edwin McCann,
MHP-205F, mc. 0451, Tel. 213-740-5169
Fax 213-740-5174, Email
Fall term office hours: Tuesdays 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.; Thursdays 4:15 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.; other times by appointment
Teaching Assistant: Dr. Brian Bowman
STO 224, Email
Fall term office hours: Mondays 10:00 a.m. to 11 a.m.; Tuesdays 12 p.m.
to 1:30 p.m.; Thursdays 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Catalogue description: Main philosophers and movements from 1900, including the major developments within phenomenology and existentialism, the emergence of structuralism and hermeneutics.
We will trace the development in the course of the twentieth century of the main lines of continental philosophical thought out of its basis in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. The overall history of philosophy in the twentieth century is, somewhat simplistically but in broad terms accurately, depicted as divided between two traditions developing almost entirely independently of one another, namely, Continental philosophy and Analytic or Anglo-American philosophy. The former is best seen as building on the work of Edmund Husserl, the latter upon the work of Husserl’s near contemporary, Gottlob Frege. Interestingly, Frege and Husserl engaged in substantive and important exchanges; but since that time the two traditions have largely disregarded, and even shunned, one another.
We will first familiarize ourselves with the main points of Husserl’s classic formulation of transcendental phenomenology in his 1913 book Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. This is a fundamental starting point for the major existentialist philosophers Martin Heidegger (Being and Time, 1926) and Jean-Paul Sartre, Transcendence of the Ego (1937) and Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology (1943), and for the related but somewhat differently focused work by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in The Phenomenology of Perception (1949). Tracing the development of this line of thinking, which will take up the bulk of the course, will be organized chronologically; after studying Heidegger’s Being and Time we will examine Husserl’s Crisis writings, which are usefully read as a response to and partial repudiation of Being and Time and which attempts to chart a new course for phenomenology in so-called phenomenological psychology. Although these writings were composed in the period 1934-38 (the year of his death), most were not published until 1954. After studying the development of phenomenology through the works by Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty we will consider some later strands of continental philosophy, mostly connected with hermeneutics, in later Heidegger and in Walter Benjamin, who was very influential on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (including notably Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno) but whose major impact in semiotics and media theory came only in the 1950s and later.
Books for the course
1.EDMUND HUSSERL, IDEAS: GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO PURE PHENOMENOLOGY. ROUTLEDGE; 1 EDITION (APRIL 26, 2012). ISBN: 978-0415519038
2.EDMUND HUSSERL, THE CRISIS OF EUROPEAN SCIENCES AND TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY; AN INTRODUCTION TO PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS (JUNE 1, 1970). ISBN: 978-0810104587
3.MARTIN HEIDEGGER, BEING AND TIME. HARPER PERENNIAL MODERN CLASSICS; REPRINT EDITION (JULY 22, 2008). ISBN: 978-0061575594
4.JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, TRANSCENDENCE OF THE EGO. HILL AND WANG (JANUARY 1, 1991). ISBN: 978-0809015450
5.JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS (AUGUST 1, 1993). ISBN: 978-0671867805
6.MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY. PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION. ROUTLEDGE; TRA EDITION (JANUARY 12, 2012). ISBN: 978-0415558693
7.MARTIN HEIDEGGER, POETRY, LANGUAGE, THOUGHT. HARPER PERENNIAL MODERN CLASSICS (NOVEMBER 6, 2001). ISBN: 978-0060937287
8.WALTER BENJAMIN, THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF ITS TECHNOLOGICAL REPRODUCIBILITY, AND OTHER WRITINGS ON MEDIA. BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS (MAY 31, 2008). ISBN: 978-0674024458
Course requirements
1. Regular attendance and participation. Counts for 15% of the course grade.
2. Two 5-6 page critical/analytical papers. Each paper counts for 25% of the course grade.
3. Take-home final exam (10-12 page synoptic overview of course); counts for 35% of the course grade.
Schedule of topics and readings
Mon Aug 27 (1.1.1) Introduction and overview.
Wed Aug 29 (1.2.2) Husserl on philosophical foundations and rigor as presupposition-free description of fact and essence. Reading: Ideas, Author’s Preface to the English Edition, Introduction, Part One (pp. xxxiv-l,1-47)
Mon Sep 3 Labor Day, University holiday, no class
Wed Sep 5 (2.1.3) Husserl on the thesis of the natural standpoint and its suspension, and the phenomenological reductions. Reading: Ideas Part Two (pp. 51-121)
Mon Sep 10 (3.1.4) Husserl on the structures of consciousness; noesis and noema. Reading: Ideas Part III chap. 2 §§76, 80, 84, chap. 3, chap. 4 §§97-115 (pp. 146-149, 162-164, 170-172, 182-203, 204-239)
Wed Sep 12 (3.2.5) Husserl on the phenomenology of reason. Reading: Ideas Part IV (pp. 265-324)
Mon Sep 17 (4.1.6) Heidegger on the question of Being. Reading: Being and Time Introduction, §§1-13 (pp. 19-90)
Wed Sep 19 (4.2.7) Heidegger on the Worldhood of the World. Reading: Being and Time §§14-24 (pp. 91-148)
Mon Sep 24 (5.1.8) Heidegger on being-with-others and being-in as such. Reading: Being and Time §§25-38 (pp. 149-219)
Wed Sep 26 (5.2.9)Heidegger on care and being-toward-death. Reading: Being and Time §§38-53 (pp. 219-311)
Mon Oct 1 (6.1.10)Heidegger on authenticity and resoluteness. Reading: Being and Time §§54-66 (pp. 312-382)
Wed Oct 3 (6.2.11) Husserl on the European crisis. Reading: Crisis Part One §§1-8; ‘The Vienna Lecture,’ Appendices IV, VII pp. 3-18, 269-299, 335-341, 379-383
Mon Oct 8 FIRST PAPER DUE.
Mon Oct 8 (7.1.12) Husserl on the life-world. Reading: Crisis pp. 103-189.
Wed Oct 10 (7.2.13)Husserl on psychology as a new mode of approach to transcendental philosophy. Reading: Crisis Part IIIB §§56-72, pp. 191-265
Mon Oct 15 (8.1.14) Sartre vs. Husserl and Descartes on the ego cogito. Reading: Transcendence of the Ego pp. 31-106
Wed Oct 17 (8.2.15) Sartre on the being of consciousness as the consciousness of being. Reading: Being and Nothingness pp. 3-30, 119-158.
Mon Oct 22 (9.1.16) Sartre on nothingness and bad faith. Reading: Being and Nothingness pp. 33-116.
Wed Oct 24 (9.2.17) Sartre on the problem of others: the Look. Reading: Being and Nothingness pp. 340-400.
Mon Oct 29 (10.1.18) Sartre on concrete relations with others; love and sexual desire. Reading: Being and Nothingness pp. 471-534.
Wed Oct 31 (10.2.19) Sartre on freedom. Reading: Being and Nothingness, pp. 619-711.
Mon Nov 5 (11.1.20) Merleau-Ponty on methodology and subject matter: phenomenological psychology distinguished from introspectionist psychology. Reading: Phenomenology of Perception Preface and Introduction, pp. lxx-lxxxv, 3-65
Wed Nov 7 (11.2.21) Merleau-Ponty on the body, the causality of action, and the fact of embodiment. Reading: Phenomenology of Perception Part One, Introduction to Part One and chaps. 1-4, pp. 69-155
Mon Nov 12 (12.1.22) Merleau-Ponty on the body as a sexed being and as expression or speech; sensing. Reading: Phenomenology of Perception Part One, chaps. 5-6, and Part Two, Introduction to Part Two and chap 1. pp. 156-252
Wed Nov 14 (12.2.23) Merleau-Ponty on the thing in the natural world, and on others and the human world. Reading: Phenomenology of Perception, Part Two, chaps. 3-4, pp. 312-360
Mon Nov 17 SECOND PAPER DUE
Mon Nov 19 (13.1.24) Merleau-Ponty on being-for-tself and being-in-the-world. Reading: Phenomenology of Perception Part Three, pp. 387-483
Wed Nov 21 Thanksgiving Recess, University holiday, no class
Mon Nov 26 (14.1.25) Heidegger revisits being-in-the-world. Reading: ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, ‘The Thing’, ‘Language’, ‘. . . Poetically man dwells . . .’. in Hofstadter pp. 143-227
Wed Nov 28 (14.2.26) Heidegger on art and truth. Reading: ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ in Hofstadter pp. 17-86
Mon Dec 3 (15.1.27) Benjamin on the reproducible work of art and the destruction of aura. Reading: ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’ (Second Version) in Jennings, Doherty and Levin pp. 19-55
Wed Dec 5 (15.2.28) Benjamin on images, photography, and film. Reading: Selections 12-17 and 27-36 in Jennings, Doherty and Levin pp. 171-194, 271-341
Tu Dec 18, 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.: FINAL EXAM PERIOD FOR THIS COURSE