Spring 2008:
The Crises of Modernity
Greg Watkins and Jeremy Sabol
Time: Tuesday evenings, 7:00 pm – 8:50 pm
Location: Building 200, Room 205
Website: http://sophia.stanford.edu
Email: gwatkins@stanford.edu (Greg); jsabol@stanford.edu (Jeremy)
Overall Course Description
The Examined Life is a three-quarter sequence introducing the philosophical tradition in the West, from its first full articulation by Plato up to trends in contemporary philosophy. Drawing on primary texts from important thinkers in the tradition, we will study the central questions of philosophy as they evolve over time: metaphysics (who are we and where are we?); epistemology (what can we know and how can we know it?); and ethics (how should we live?). Since Socrates, these questions have been deeply interrelated; we will focus particularly on how metaphysical and epistemological concerns provide the framework for theories of how we should live.
Spring Quarter Course Description
Modern philosophy is marked not by a single crisis but by several, some arising from within philosophy itself and others sparked by larger movements in Western culture. Kant’s critical philosophy inaugurates this period, reaching the summit of traditional metaphysics but also ringing its death knell. The Kantian project suggested radical limits to what and how much we could truly know about the outside world, effectively putting an end to Cartesian rationalism. However, it also offered profound insights into what we could learn from our own inquiry into ourselves and reality. These new insights provoked many responses, and chief among them were a richer, deeper concept of the self, as articulated by the Romantics, and the Hegelian attempt to project notions of that self into a larger sphere of activity. These new concepts of the self were quickly upended, however, by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud and replaced by a troubling proposition—that we are strangers not only to the outside world, but to ourselves as well. This line of thinking continued to haunt philosophers throughout the 20th century, and it remains with us today. In this course, we will read original texts by the thinkers mentioned above as well as by Schopenhauer, Mill, James, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Sartre, and Rorty, among others.
Requirements
We expect that you will come to class having read the material and prepared to discuss it. You are also invited to submit questions about the readings, as well as short reflections on the readings, sent to us by email (we will try to address your questions in class the following night). If you are taking the course for a letter grade, you will arrange additional work with us individually; such work generally is in the form of a final paper, the topic of which we should decide together.
Readings
The primary text for the course is:
Cahn, Stephen M., Classics of Western Philosophy (Hackett, 2007).
It should be available now in the Stanford Bookstore. We apologize in advance for how big the book is!
We will often supplement this text with handouts. For the most part, these will be handed out in class a week before we discuss them; they will also be posted online here.
Calendar
4/01/08 Session 1 Kant: Philosophy as Critique
Readings: Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (PDF selections here); Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (Classics of Western Philosophy, pp. 981-984; 991-1011)
4/07/08 Session 2 Hegel: History and Phenomenology
Readings: Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Classics pp. 1023-1037); Philosophy of History (PDF selections here)
4/15/08 Session 3 Mill: Utilitarianism
Readings: Mill, Utilitarianism (Classics pp. 1058-1090); On Liberty (Classics pp. 1091-1097)
4/22/08 Session 4 Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard: Resentment and Anguish
Readings: Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (Classics pp. 1040-1047); Kierkegaard, (Classics pp. 1048-1055)
4/29/08 Session 5 Nietzsche: Diagnosing Illness in Culture
Readings: The Gay Science (1st PDF, 2nd PDF); Genealogy of Morals (PDF selections here)
5/06/08 Session 6 Marx and Freud: Humanity Fractured
Readings: Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (PDF selections here); Freud, On Dreams (PDF selections here)
5/13/08 Session 7 James: The Will to Believe
Readings: James, Pragmatism (Classics pp. 1139-1148); The Will to Believe (Classics pp. 1149-1160); Varieties of Religious Experience (PDF selections here)
5/20/08 Session 8 Wittgenstein: Language Games and Philosophy as Therapy
Readings: Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (selections online soon); Philosophical Investigations (Classics pp. 1207-1221); Rorty (selections online soon)
5/27/08 Session 9 Heidegger: Being-in-the-World
Readings: Heidegger, What is Metaphysics? (selections online soon); Being and Time (selections online soon)
6/03/08 Session 10 Sartre: Philosophy as Commitment
Readings: Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (Classics pp. 1192-1204)