Introductory description

PH143 - Existence, Experience, History: Key Topics in Continental Philosophy

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1: Enlightenment as critique (Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: “What is Enlightenment?”’; Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’); Week 2: Dialectics of recognition (Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit; Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks); Week 3: Alienation and ideology (Marx, ‘From the Paris Notebooks (1844)’; Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’); Week 4: Death of God, nihilism, eternal recurrence (Nietzsche, excerpts from The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo; Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy); Week 5: The genealogy of morality (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality; Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’); Week 7: Existentialism and humanism (Heidegger, Being and Time, ‘Letter on “Humanism’; Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism); Week 8: Freedom, oppression, and the other (Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism; Beauvoir, The Second Sex, The Ethics of Ambiguity); Week 9: Phenomenology of the body (Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception; Young, ‘Throwing Like a Girl’); Week 10: Ethics and the boundaries of the human (Levinas, Totality and Infinity; Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• By the end of the module, the students should be familiar with many of the main philosophical approaches and concerns associated with continental philosophy. They should be able to engage in a close, critical reading of key texts in this philosophical tradition, and to present and discuss in an informed way the main ideas and problems presented in these texts.
• … have a systematic knowledge and understanding of many of the key topics associated with ‘continental philosophy’ as discussed in some of the classic texts associated with this philosophical tradition. On this basis, the students should also be able to understand how the ideas and arguments they encounter differ and to offer an independent critical assessment of them.
• Key skills: … to communicate clearly and substantively in speech and in writing on the issues raised by their close reading and critical analysis of relevant texts. They should be able to engage with these texts in a way that appreciates their relevance to wider issues.
• Cognitive skills: ... be able to analyse and critically evaluate the different theories and arguments connected with the topics presented, and to come to an independent assessment of their merits.

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Subject specific skills

(a) The ability to understand the distinctive features and aims of the 'continental' tradition in philosophy. (b) The ability to recognise the different forms taken by certain recurrent topics/concepts (freedom, experience, power, master/slave dialectic, etc.) in different continental philosophers. (c) The ability to pursue independent philosophical research.

Transferable skills

Transferable skills: (a) The ability to communicate information (verbally and in written form) to people both expert and non-expert in the field; (b) The ability to analyse, evaluate, critique and apply complex information gathered from reading, reflection, reasoning or communication. (c) The ability to effectively manage schedules and deadlines.