Fall 1998
M-W-F 11:30
to 12:20
205 Nat Sci
| There is no single theory or
standpoint shared by the thinkers who are often referred to as "existentialists,"
but they address problems that have become acute in the modern world:
how can individuality be preserved against the conformism of large-scale
institutions and mass culture? what does it mean to be human in the
universe as understood by natural science? what is it to choose and
act, in short, to have a distinctive identity? what can be the source
of meaning and values when traditions (religious and otherwise) no longer
speak to the pressures of experience? how is our selfhood tied to
relations with others?
To approach such questions as problems of "existence" is very abstract, but most of these thinkers argue that our inherited ways of understanding the world have been stretched to the breaking point. We will talk about their views and arguments on these themes both in relation to long standing debates in philosophy and in relation to concrete problems in our world. In particular, we will explore how existentialist thought helps us think about conflicts over power and identity as illustrated in modern forms of prejudice and oppression and in the challenges to them. |
Links
to sites on Existentialism
Texts
for class discussion