Philosophy 155: Continental Philosophy

Curtis Bowman
Logan Hall 464
898-8563 (dept.)
cubowman@nous.phil.upenn.edu
http://www.phil.upenn.edu/~cubowman

Course Description

Many recent continental philosophers, e.g., the members of the Frankfurt School and Foucault, have devoted themselves to a critique of the way in which the Enlightenment notion of rationality has been transformed from a logic of human liberation to a politically conservative instrument of domination. Other continental philosophers, e.g., Derrida and his followers, have challenged our ability simply to interpret the world, to say nothing of our ability to change it.

In this course we shall trace these developments through a reading of various texts in the Enlightenment tradition and more recent ones critical of modern distortions of this tradition. We shall begin briefly with Kant and Marx, two exemplars of this tradition, and then we shall study in some detail the views of the Frankfurt School, Foucault, and Derrida.

Required Texts

Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc.

Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx

Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader    (Abbreviated as FR)

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment    (Abbreviated as DoE)

Karl Marx, Selected Writings

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics

(A bulkpack of required readings is available at the Campus Copy Center at 3907 Walnut St.)

Readings

General Background

(1) Immanuel Kant: "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" (in bulkpack)

(2) Karl Marx

(a) The Concept of Alienation: "On the Jewish Question," "Toward a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction," and selections from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (pp. 58-79)

(b) Historical Materialism and Ideology: The German Ideology, Part I

(c) The Analysis and Critique of Capitalism: selections from Capital (pp. 220-300)

The Frankfurt School

(1) The Concept of Critical Theory: Horkheimer's "The Social Function of Philosophy" (in bulkpack)

(2) Dialectic of Enlightenment

(a) The Project of Enlightenment: Chapters 1, 2, & 3 of DoE

(b) The Culture Industry: Chapter 4 of DoE

(c) Enlightenment and Anti-Semitism: Chapter 5 of DoE

Michel Foucault

(1) Foucault's Project: "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" and "What is Enlightenment?" (in FR)

(2) The Critique of Institutions: "Truth and Power" (in FR); selections from Madness and Civilization and Discipline and Punish (pp. 123-238 of FR)

(3) The Archaeology of Knowledge and the End of Man: The Order of Things (chs. 1-3, 6-8, 10)

Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction

(1) Background: Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, pp. 7-25, 65-91, 98-134

(2) Derrida's Critique of Saussure: "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" and "Differance" (in bulkpack)

(3) The Derrida-Searle Debate:

(a) Background: Searle's "What is a Speech Act?" (in bulkpack)

(b) The Debate: Derrida's "Signature Event Context" (in Limited Inc.); Searle's "Reiterating the Differences" (in bulkpack); Derrida's "Limited Inc. a b c . . ." (in Limited Inc.)

(c) Searle's "Literary Theory and its Discontents" (in bulkpack)

(4) Derrida's Specters of Marx

Students will write two papers of 5-10 pages. There will also be a comprehensive exam at the end of the semester. Each assignment will count for a third of the course grade.

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This page last modified on August 24, 1999.