PHEB505 Existentialism

Annotation:

The aim of this course is to introduce and develop some of the major topics of Existentialism. It begins with the question about the specificity of thought: Existentialism is cultural and literary movement rather than a restricted and systematic philosophical position. This requires to identify the basics points depicting his “image”, the provocative questions relevant to many fields of human expression, especially the literature and the narrative arts. Topics include the human condition, being, freedom, the desire of meaning, absurd, authenticity, anxiety, resoluteness, but also the “lost beauty” – all sophisticated issues of existential formula “Existence precedes essence”. Authors discussed range from Kirkegaard and Nietzsche to Sartre, Camus, Jaspers, Ricoeur, Merleau-Ponty, Ortega-y-Gasset and the Philosophy of life. This course will help students become better skilled in understanding and intelligently discussing many difficult problems of human existence, which today are problems of distinguishable and worthwhile worldviews.

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Philosophy

Lecturers:

Prof. Lidia Denkova, PhD

Course Description:

Competencies:

After completing successfully this course the students will:

1) know:

• The central existential writings and authors with their concepts and profound impact on the development of contemporary thought;

2) are capable of:

• Understanding and approaching in interdisciplinary context the most valuable philosophical ideas in the mainstream of modernity.


Prerequisites:
• Good general knowledge in the field of the History of Ideas

SKILLS



Types:
Full-time Programmes

Types of Courses:
Lecture

Language of teaching:
English

Topics:

  1. The Existentialism in the intellectual history of XX century. Postwar years in France and the literary emergence of philosophical movement.
  2. Precursors of the movement: from Augustine and Pascal to Kirkegaard and Nietzsche
  3. Metaphysical foundations of existentialist views: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.
  4. Plato’s Aesthetics in “Symposium” , “Philebus” and “The Republic”. Medieval tradition.
  5. Aristotle’s Poetics and the Birth of tragedy. Art as "energeia" and "techne".
  6. The concept of Sublime: Longinus, Burke and Kant.
  7. Aesthetic theories in Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci Treatise on painting. Neoplatonic views: Marsilio Ficino and Lorenzo Valla The Monadology of Leibniz and his aesthetic value.
  8. Aesthetic theories in 18 Century. Yves-Marie Andre and the model of music. Diderot, Hume, Hutcheson. The question of taste. Ethics and Aesthetics: Shiller.
  9. The beginning of Modern thought in “homo aestheticus” of Nietzsche: Apollonian and Dionysian sources of creativity. The perception and the perspective.
  10. Ontology of art. Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger.
  11. Existentialist Aesthetics: the “system of the arts”. The heritage of Hegel's Aesthetics.
  12. Art as revelation of the world and self-expression. Psychology of art. The “end” of art: Arthur Danto
  13. Aesthetics and narration. The recurrence of great myths. Visual arts and the predominance of the “images”. The example of Cinema.
  14. Contemporary Aesthetics in philosophical perspective. Part one.
  15. Contemporary Aesthetics in philosophical perspective. The philosopher and the artist: Merleau-Ponty and "The doubt of Cezanne".

Bibliography:

Suggested Readings:

1) Existentialism. Basic writings. Second edition. Edited by Charles Guignon and Derk Pereboom. Hackett Publishing Company, 2001.

2) Entries related to Existentialism in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu).

3) The Phenomenology Reader. Edited by D. Moran and T. Mooney, Routledge, 2002.

4) Albert Camus. The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays, trans. by Justin O'Brien, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979.

5) Albert Camus. The Rebel. An Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. by Anthony Bowen, London: Vintage, 1992.

6) Existentialism and Popular Wisdom, in Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical Writings, M. Simons (with M. Timmerman and M.B. Mader) ed., Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004, 195–220.

7) Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. by David Carr Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1970.

8) Jean-Paul Sartre. Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel Barnes, New York: Philosophical Library, 1948.

9) Jean-Paul Sartre (1948). What is Literature?, trans. by Bernard Frechtman, London: Methuen, 1967.

10) Dreyfus, Hubert & Wrathall, Marx. A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism, Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.

11) Martin Heidegger. “Letter on Humanism,” in Pathmarks. Ed. William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

12) M. Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. Tr. Colin Smith. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.

13) H. Arendt, H. The Human Condition (1958). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

14) J. Collins, J. The Existentialists: A Critical Study, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952.

15) K. Jaspers. Reason and Existenz. Tr. William Earle. New York: Noonday Press, 1968.

16) S. Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. Tr. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, 1983.

17) John Searle. Philosophy in a New Century. Selected Essays. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

18) Blaise Pascal. Selected readings. Fleming H. Revell Co, 1991.

19) The Existentialist Reader: An anthology of key Texts, ed. By Paul S. MacDonald, 2001.

20) G. Marcel. The Philosophy of Existentialism. New York, Citadel Press, 1968.