This web page is to supply students in my class with information, required texts, and links of supplementary interest.
Course Description Assignments Links
Fichte Hegel Schopenhauer Nietzsche Husserl
This web page is to supply students in my class with information, required texts, and links of supplementary interest.
Course Description Assignments Links
Fichte Hegel Schopenhauer Nietzsche Husserl
The course is a survey of post-Kantian German idealist philosophers
from Fichte to Husserl. The common thread of the course will be
the various strategies to develop the Kantian transcendental deduction
into the "absolute viewpoint" of "experience,"
and the common name for this philosophical project is transcendental
idealism. The philosophers considered will be Fichte, with his
pure logic of consciousness and Hegel with his dialectic of experience.
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche later put forward another version of
transcendental idealism that locates the absolute activity in
the will rather than in cognition. Finally Husserl attempts to
refound the idealist project with his science of pure experiential
description, Phenomenology.
At the outset of the 21st century, transcendental idealism may
seem an archaic position in view of the vigorous explanatory theories
of cognitive science, AI, neurophysiology, evolutionary psychology,
formal linguistics, and so on. While we cannot attend to these
more recent views, their presence and plurality attest to a lively
interest and debate about our topic: various attempts to render
comprehensible the activity of a conscious self in experience.
The course should help students to acquire a measure of skill
and understanding for these debates.
The primary goals of the course are three:
- first, to provide an introductory acquaintance with several
significant philosophers (Fichte, Hegel, etc.) and their distinctive
approach to philosophy, so that the student has a clear notion
of what is, for example, "Hegelian" or "phenomenology;"
- second, to provide students with an understanding of some fundamental
concepts and arguments in the philosophy of mind; and
- third, to provide students with an appreciation of transcendental
idealism as a profound and still worthwhile philosophical project.
Readings.
We begin with Fichte's first Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre
as an introduction to the fundamentals of post-Kantian Idealism.
Selections from Hegel's Phenomenology and the Encyclopedia
Logic will draw out aspects of Hegel's dialectical view of
experience. In addition we will read several texts that are the
basis of his enormous influence in politics, history, and social
thought.
The course then turns to the mid-19th century transformation of
idealism from a philosophy of consciousness and cognition into
a philosophy of the will. Readings from Schopenhauer will serve
to introduce Nietzsche's "transvaluation" of values
by the will to power. The Nietzsche selections will be from The
Joyful Wisdom or, as it is also known, The Gay Science.
The third and final portion of the course will be devoted to the
"Neue Sachlichkeit" ("new factuality") of
Husserlian phenomenology. Readings will be selections from
Husserl's Ideas, and The Crises of European Sciences. In these, he seeks to return philosophy to its Platonic bases of evidence, insight, essence, and knowledge.
Class and Course Requirements.
Times: The class meets on Monday (11:00 - 13:00) and on Wednesday,
and Thursday (15:00 - 17:00). My office hours are Tuesday, 13:00 - 14:00. The Cartesian Meditations reading group meets Monday's at 15:00 in my office (TB #450).
Grading: There will be a midterm exam (30%, July 14th), a paper
(30%, due July 29th) and a final exam (40%, August 4th). Details of test
format and questions, as well as paper topics and due dates will
be provided in class.
Readings and Assignments: The following is a week-by-week syllabus. Specific page assignments will be given in class. Xerox copies of the readings in English are available at Durak Copy. Some of the readings are available on the web and given as links below.
Week #1: (24.6)
Introductions, The Kantian "Copernican Revolution."
Selections from Fichte's "First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre."
Wissenschaftslehre, First Introduction, Sections 1-4.
Week #2 (28.6 - 1.7)
Hegel on philosophy and phenomenology. Selections from The
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences ("Introduction" and
"Second Attitude to Objectivity").
Encyclopedia Logic, Sections 1-18 and 37 -39.
Week #3 (5.7 - 8.7)
Hegel on politics, history. Selections from the Encyclopedia and Phenomenology of Mind.
Readings are paragraphs 5-20 from "Lordship and Bondage" from the Phenomenology; "Family and Civil Society" (paragraphs 513-528 from Encyclopedia vol. 3, Philosophy of Mind); and "Dialectics of the Industrial State" paragraphs 236-248 from Philosophy of Right.
Week #4 (12.7 - 15.7)
Schophenhauer on the will and morality. Selections from The World
as Will and Representation, Volume II.
Chapters 1, 18, and 28.
This week will also have a midterm exam on Wednesday, July 14th.
Week #5 (19.7 - 22.7)
Nietzsche on consciousness, will, and morality. The Gay
Science, paragraphs #335-357.
Week #6 (26.7 - 29.7)
Husserl's transcendental phenomenology: intentionality, meaning,
evidence, noesis and noema, the epoche and phenomenological description.
Read the selection of paragraphs from Ideas in the packet. In addition, lectures will refer to Crisis of the European Sciences (see links at Husserl link above).
There will be a paper of 5-10 pages due on Thursday, July 29th of this week. Extensions are possible if arranged in advance.
Week #7 (2.8 - 5.8)
Review of the course and overview of transcendental idealism.
The final exam for the course is scheduled for Wednesday, August 4th, 9:30-11:30 AM. Final course grades will be available on Monday, August 9th.
Internet Resources. (Note that the philosopher's portraits at the top of the page are links to websites for each philosopher.)
Peter Suber - a most impressive site, it takes a long time to load. Plans to improve on it have been suspended.
Fichte, Outlines of the Doctrine of Knowledge. From 1810 Wissenshaftslehre.
Hegel, The
Phenomenology of Mind
The
Encyclopedia Logic
The Philosophy of Right
Schopenhauer, a selection from The World as Will and Representation.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science And here is the missing paragraph 354 on "consciousness"
Husserl, Crisis of the European Sciences
noli foras ire, in te redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas.
