Location – Greenwich Maritime: L006, Mondays 4-6pm (both semesters)
The sessions will consist of a lecture followed by a seminar/discussion session, each approximately one hour in length. There will also be an assessed online seminar at the Universities WebCT facilitity (accessed via the Greenwich University student portal).
- Existentialism and Phenomenology resources
The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy is an excellent and respected ‘net site and they have an entry on Kierkegaard here. Their entry on Simone De Beauvoir should also be useful, along with the one on Jean-Paul Sartre. They also have broader entries that look at existentialism and phenomenology as specific ‘areas’ of philosophy.
The ubiquitous Wikipedia entry on Kierkegaard is here. They also have entries on De Beauvoir, Sartre, existentialism and phenomenology.
An online version of Fear and Trembling is here, along with various commentaries on Kiekegaard’s works. (Beware of ever just copying anything from a websource such as these commentaries of course, or from any other source for that matter – though it’s obviously slightly more tempting for some people when ‘copy’n'paste’ is so quick and easy – that’s plagiarism and gets you kicked out of university ;-) )
Two articles that might be worth reading that touch on the issue of transcendence / immanence within De Beauvoir are here:
de Beauvoir and Sartre – woman, man and the desire to be god.pdf
existentialism, resistance and the second sex.pdf
- Course Outline and Lecture Notes
Aims of the course:
The object of this course is to provide both an overview of the key philosophical movements of existentialism (semester 1) and phenomenology (semester 2) as well as an introduction to the close study of important texts in the history of philosophy. You will be expected to learn to read an author closely and attentively, listening to both what is said and what is implied in a text as you develop your understanding of their thought. This will be particularly important when reading Kierkegaard as he wrote, for good reasons, under various pseudonyms, each of which has their character, but will apply to a greater or lesser extent to all the authors under discussion.
The idea of me providing resources here is to assist you in your work, not to do the work for you. The very act of taking notes is, if done correctly, an aid to listening in the lectures. You should try to use your own notes to trace an outline of what you understand as well as to identify questions that arise, words that are difficult to understand and thoughts that might be sparked off as you listen.
Assessment will consist of one comprehension test, which will involve you using the close and slow reading skills that we are teaching, followed by one essay.
Semester 1
After an introductory lecture, we will begin by reading Kierkegaard’s ‘Fear and Trembling’ for 6 weeks. We will then move on to will look at the ideas of Simone De Beauvoir, focussing on extracts from her major work The second sex. You will need to obtain a copy of ‘Fear and Trembling’ (this is a link to the edition we will be working from, copies of which should be available in the university bookshop) but I will provide a course reader of extracts from ‘The second sex’. Please ensure you do the reading before class so that you can fully participate in the sessions.
schedule of lectures
1.) Introduction to existentialism and Kierkegaard EPLecture1 pdf
2.) Fear and Trembling: Abraham and the subjective character (Read: Preface, Exordiums I-III, Eulogy on Abraham, ) Lecture 2 pdf
3.) Fear and Trembling: The knight of faith and movement(Read: Preliminary Expectoration) Lecture 3 notes
4.) Fear and Trembling: The individual and the universal (Read: Problemata I, Problemata II) Lecture 4 notes
5.) Fear and Trembling: Understanding, honesty and free indirect speech (Read: Problemata III) Lecture 5 notes
6.) – Film Screening – Either Vanishing Point or Thirteen conversations about one thing
7.) Character and viewpoint: biography and philosophy (Class reader to be distributed) Lecture 7 notes
8.) The Second Sex – Feminism and woman as The Other (Read: extracts from class reader) Lecture 8 notes
9.) The Second Sex – Relationality: the immanence/transcendence divide (Read: extracts from class reader) Lecture 9 notes
10.) The Second Sex – The Situation and The Project (Read: extracts from class reader) Lecture 10 notes
11.) Philosophy and Existentialism – poetry or thought?
