The course has a seminar form and requires a lot of reading and active involvement from its participants. During the semester, we will go through selected parts of the crucial texts of modern philosophy authored by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir and Michel Foucault.

The course has a seminar form and requires a lot of reading and active involvement from its participants. During the semester, we will go through selected parts of the crucial texts of modern philosophy authored by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir and Michel Foucault.

Important reminder: the actual syllabus and course materials is to be found in Moodle: https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=9678

 

1)  Enlightenment, Modernity and the rise of historical consciousness

a. I. Kant: "Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)
b. M. Foucault: What is Enlightenment? (1983) [Foucault Reader, pp. 32-50]

Further Readings:
Schmidt, J. (1989). The Question of Enlightenment: Kant, Mendelssohn, and the Mittwochsgesellschaft. Journal of the History of Ideas,50(2), 269-291. doi:10.2307/2709735
Schmidt, J. (2011). Misunderstanding the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’: Venturi, Habermas, and Foucault, History of European Ideas, 37:1,43-52,DOI: 10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.08.002
J. Habermas: Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Lecture 1.

2)  The Discovery of inter-subjectivity

Required readings: G. W. F. Hegel, Master and Servitude [Phenomenology of Spirit, pp. 108-116]
Further readings: A. Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, pp. 3-30.

3)  The intersubjectivity and recognition of underprivileged subjects

a. J.-P. Sartre, Reflections on the Jewish Question, pgs. 7-54.
b. F. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, chpt. 5, p. 109-140.

4)    From male-centered reflections of subjectivity to plurality of (feminist) perspectives

S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Introduction and the chapter on Myths, pgs. 13-28; 159-211; 260-269.

Further readings. S. de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, chapter "Ambiguity and Freedom", pgs. 1-34.

5)  Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Language  

a. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus

b. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

6)    Existentialism

a. Ortega y Gasset, Man has no nature

b. Martin Heidegger, What is Metaphysics?

c. J.-P. Sartre, Existentialism is Humanism

7)    Freedom, truth and politics

H. Arendt, a. Truth and Politics; b. What is Freedom

8)    Moral responsibility under conditions of modernity

H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem

9)    Emancipation and subjugation

M. Foucault, We Other Victorians; The Repressive Hypothesis

 

Assessment Students are required to (1) regularly read texts in advance and participate in class discussions. (2) Write three brief summary-papers or let us call them mini commentaries on given texts during the semester (up to 1000 words). They are assessed strictly on passed/failed basis. (3) Each week one student will summarize the content of the class-discussion from the previous week. Who presents a summary in class has the advantage of writing two mini commentaries only.