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

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

Sept. 12

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: 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

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.)

Heidegger’s Fundamental Concept of Metaphysics, sections 49-51, 58-63.

Resources for Arendt:

1. BBC In these Times, Hannah Arendt.

2. Partially Examined Life, The Human Condition, “On the Public and the Private,” Pt. 1 (podcast), and Pt. 2 (podcast)

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.

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).