Fall 2017: Existentialism

1. Listen to BBC, In our Time, “Existentialism” (podcast).

2. Steven Crowell, “Existentialism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Sept. 12

*If you have not received an email from me, please email me at my email address on the syllabus about the work for this week and for me to send you a link that  you will need.*

Resources for Nietzsche:

1. BBC, In our Time, “Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality” (podcast).

2. R. Lanier Anderson, “Nietzsche,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Resources for Sartre:

1. BBC In these Times, “Sartre” (podcast)

2. Nigel Warburton, “Student’s Guide to Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism,” Philosophy Now (1996). 

Resources for Heidegger:

1. Françoise Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time, pp. 1-16; 53-70.

2. Dorothea Frede, “The Question of Being: Heidegger’s Project,” from Cambridge Companion to Heidegger.

3. I. Thompson, “What is Ontotheology?”

4. Stuart Elden, “Heidegger’s Animals,” Continental Philosophy Review (2006) 39: 273–291.

Sept. 26

Read: Heidegger’s Fundamental Concept of Metaphysics, sections 16-17, 19-22.Read: Harvard’s Brief Guide to Writing a Philosophy Paper

First Writing Assignment Due (4 pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman font): In this paper, you will elucidate, over three pages, the critique either Nietzsche or Heidegger have for the tradition of metaphysics? What is the continuing error of that tradition? Do they have a suggestion for how to overcome this tradition? (15 pts.)

Oct. 9

*Professor’s Lectures* (Discussion on D2L)

LAST DAY TO DROP WITHOUT PREJUDICE: You have at least 20% of your grade completed at this time.

Second Writing Assignment Due (4 pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman font): In this exegetical paper, you will provide an overview of Heidegger’s three accounts of boredom. Why is his account of boredom important to this ontology? Why is the consideration of the third form of boredom most important of all? (15 pts.)

Resources for Arendt:

1. My podcast is here, going over the work as a whole and its major theses, including her underread claims later in the book about “earth alienation.” (based in many parts on an undedited version of my contribution to The Bloomsbury Companion, due out next year and co-edited by me with Yasemin Sari.)
2. BBC In these Times, Hannah Arendt.
3. George Kateb, “Political Action: Its Nature and Advantages,” The Cambridge Companion to Arendt, ed. Dana Villa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
4. Jerome Kohn, “Freedom: Priority of the Political,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arendt.
5. Karin Fry, “Natality,” in Hannah Arendt: Key Terms, ed. Patrick Hayden (London: Bloomsbury, 2012).
6. Paul Voice, “Labor, Work, Action,” in Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts.
7.  Siobhan Kattago, “Hannah Arendt on the World,” in Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts.

Read: Arendt, The Human Condition, Part III, 79-100, 126-end; Part V, 175-211.

1. The Steiner Show, “What Fanon Said”

Third Writing Assignment Due (4 pages, double-spaced, Times New Roman font): In this exegetical paper, you will provide an overview of Arendt’s meaning of “world alienation.” How does this contrast with Heidegger’s own notion of world as explored in the FCM (10 pts.)

Resources for Camus:

1. BBC In our Times, “Camus” (podcast).