Face-to-face , first and second term, 90 hours of theory.

First term
Tuesday from 11:00 to 12:00 at 43 Botanique 1
Thursday from 09:00 to 11:00 at 43 Botanique 1
Second term
Wednesday from 15:00 to 16:00 at 43 Botanique 1
Thursday from 09:00 to 11:00 at 43 Botanique 1

French.

The aim is to develop the students' critical mind and capability to reflect by introducing them to different forms of philosophical discursivity, and in particular argumentation. The course also aims is to awaken their curiosity to the complexity of the forms of thought and questions that mark the history of philosophy.

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The course is made up of six main parts:

During the first term, we start by asking the Socratic question "ti esti": what is this philosophy, with its seemingly daunting and incomprehensible discourse? We will see how all philosophical questioning is in reality rooted in a deep questioning of our being to the world that can pass through all nuances, from astonishment, amazement, disruption, to terror, all these connotations are included in Aristotle's famous "thaumazein", too often reduced only to mear "astonishment". We will focus on the causes that can generate such an upheaval and encourage human beings to begin to philosophise: the observation of the movement of the stars but also the terror in the face of the unlimited for Aristotle, the theoretical vertigo of mathematical problems in Theaetetus by Plato, the unease induced by the observation that all teacher's lessons contradict each other and therefore not one reaches the truth in Descartes' Discourse on method, awareness of one's own mortality through anxiety in Being and Time by Heidegger, etc.
We will then examine the various methods implemented by philosophers to control this original upheaval: state of the question to transform the incomprehensible into aporia likely to find a solution through the implementation of an argument with Aristotle, analytical division and synthetic reconstruction of problems with Descartes, etc. Finally, we see how philosophers have striven to "artificially" reproduce mastered ersatz of this original thaumazein: experimentation-fiction of the subject looking down from his window at passers-by ... that are supposedly robots for Descartes, in order to show that what we take for "perception" is actually a "judgment"; thought experiment of "brains in a vat" by Hilary Putnam, to show that mental states and brain states are not identical, etc. In a thousand and one different ways, philosophers have striven to question the "obvious facts" shared by all men in everyday life, whether it is to refute them or on the contrary to establish them by making them "aware of themselves".

The second part of the course will address the issue of the Greek origin of Western philosophy (II). We will follow here two perspectives, which will first be discussed separately, then we will try to reunite them: the view that links this origin to a question of Being, and the view that places it in an ambivalent relation of opposition and reworking of myth and poetry. In the first perspective, we study how pre-Socratics thought the being through the issue of arkhe, origin and foundation of the cosmos. With Plato, we will discuss the complex relationship between Being and Non-Being, as well as the status of the "Idea" as real Being. Finally, Aristotle will allow us to address the Being, according to the polysemy through which he sees him: per se being, accidental being, potential being, actual being, etc. In the second perspective, we will begin by studying the poetic texts that constitute the fundamental references of the Greek culture: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, as well as Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod. If the Socrates of the Republic call Homer "the teacher of Greece" and vigorously fights the representation of gods and heroes of the epic, it is because Homer provides the entire Greek world, at least until the 5th century, with the framework of its values, its representation of what makes the essence of the human being, the cosmos, gods, justice and the common world. We will also study the importance of tragedy in the self-institution of the Athenian democratic city, and in order to understand the importance of the criticism that Plato addresses to it (remembering the, at first, incredible affirmation according to which it is the exclusion of tragic and comic poets that justifies the ideal city of the Republic as "the best possible"), we will focus on the "case" of Sophocle's Antigone, trying to understand why this tragedy has not ceased to intrigue philosophers from Hegel, Hölderlin, to Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur. We will end by examining the status of the use of myth and poetry among philosophers to formulate the question of being, notably exploring the poem of Parmenides, and the "theatricality" inherent to the Platonic dialogues, as well as the philosophical myths they contain.

Finally, in the third part of the course, we will study the relationship that links philosophy from its origins, to politics, understood here in the general sense of "search for living well together" (III). We will see how the so-called "pre-Socratic" philosophers associate cosmological questioning to political questioning. We will study the specific functioning of the Athenian democratic city and its institutions, in order to understand how the thought of the sophist Protagoras constitutes its theory. This "Athenian" anchoring will help us understand the political philosophy of Plato, including his recurring criticism of democracy. Based on the Politicus dialogue, we also focus on what is the first criticism of the abstract universalism of the law, and on the “solutions” that Plato offers to escape it. While taking note of the Greek particularity according to which the foundation of a colony was necessarily accompanied by the creation of a new constitution (thus not importing the laws of the city of origin) that could be entrusted to a single man (Protagoras would have thus drafted the constitution of the colony of Thurii), we will address the issue of legislative ingenuity in the Laws, Plato's last dialogue. With Aristotle, we will start from the famous definition of the human as "having logos and being political", to ask ourselves if Aristotle denies human status to all people living in non-political forms of society (meaning: who do not live in cities, therefore, who are not Greek). We will focus on the definition of citizen and political community he offers to try to solve this troubling question ... and so we will discover another question along the way: if the life of the citizen is the only truly human life for Aristotle, the life of the philosopher is considered "almost beyond human" and godlike. What must we understand by this? In the twentieth century, we will explore the endpoints of the link between philosophy and politics, firstly studying the aporia with which philosophers were faced after the Holocaust, the systematic and organised extermination of 5 to 6 million people just because they were Jews under the Nazis. For some philosophers, this event marks the total collapse of Western reason, following which "it is no longer possible to philosophise". For others, on contrary it is up to philosophy to work on a self-criticism of rationality, which shows its intrinsic violence, but also the possibility to control and channel this violence. We will address the issue of Heidegger's Nazi engagement in relation to his underlying philosophy, in order to justify whether or not to distinguish the "little man" from the "great philosopher". We will then study the analyses that Hannah Arendt devoted to totalitarianism in general and more particularly to Nazism and her report on the Eichmann trial for a major newspaper of the time. In a second step, we will discuss the endpoint of the relationship between philosophy and politics on its positive side, where, to say it in the words of Cornelius Castoriadis, politics become a "political thought in action". So, we will complete our journey by returning to Athens in the fifth century B.C., which, according to Castoriadis, established such a form of "political thought in action", that he calls it an "autonomous" society (which gives itself its own laws), as opposed to "heteronomous" societies. We will consider the "Truth and Reconciliation" Commission that followed the end of apartheid in South Africa, as an example of "autonomous" political inventiveness in the sense that Castoriadis defines it.

In the second term, we will study the modulations of the relationship between philosophy and science over the centuries, from the Greeks (IV). We will examine for instance, how Plato in his dialogues faces the “scandal” of the discovery of irrational numbers, and also manages to incorporate a major discovery of his time, the construction of the regular polyhedra, into a political questioning, through the construction a cosmological myth in the Timaeus. In Modern Times, we will focus on the importance of the logico-deductive paradigm of demonstration in the work of Descartes, from "Rules for the Direction of the Mind" to "Metaphysical Meditations". We also seek to understand the fascination of Pascal for the void, from his experiments on the physical vacuum to his metaphysical reflection on the “nothingness” of the human. In the nineteenth century, we will see how science is “unmasked” by Nietzsche as being a big mythology, and any pretence of objectivity is an illusion. In the twentieth century, we will study the reduction of science to the art in which engages Heidegger, making the “reduction” of being to the technique, the culmination of all Western metaphysics. We also focus on the ontologies of chaos developed by a series of thinkers: Isabelle Stengers and Ilya Prigogine, with a study of dissipative structures in chemistry, Cornelius Castoriadis with the study of the logic of magmas. We also focus on the mathematical ontology developed by Alain Badiou, based on Cantor's theorem.

The fifth part of the course will address the question of the relationship between philosophy and transcendence (V). Our guideline is to observe the oscillations of the status of the divine, between logical design and mystical design. Will be discussed for instance, god as the “greatest conceivable being” from Aristotle, the divine designed as the first stationary engine that helps explain the world of becoming in Physics, and as “thinking of thinking” or “pure act” in Metaphysics, unlike humans, still on the road from the potentiality of knowledge to its actualisation. We will address the Middle Ages with the different “mixes” caused by the encounter of Christianity and Greek philosophy: this way we will discuss the Christian neo-Platonism in the study of his conversion in the Confessions of St. Augustine, or the Christian Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas, who sought to reconcile faith and reason. We will also address Arabic philosophy, giving us some markers to understand Islam today, including the influence of neo-Platonism in the formation of the Shiite movement. We will also examine the natural religion as Rousseau describes it in the famous “profession of faith of the Savoyard Vicar” from L'Emile. We will see how the belief in the existence of God is for Kant an Idea of Reason, impossible to prove, but rooted in a “drive” consubstantial to the human nature. Finally, we analyse the consequences of Nietzsche's “death of God” and the ambivalence of the resulting nihilism.

In conclusion, the sixth part of the course (VI) will be devoted to love, which is one of the four possibility conditions of philosophy according to Alain Badiou. In particular, we will study Eros as demon philosopher in the Banquet and the identification between falling in love and becoming a philosopher in Phèdre. In the twentieth century, we will start from the “Two” of Love by Alain Badiou, as what enables to create a chance to escape the alternative of “terrorism” of the one or dispersion in the Multiple. We will then turn to the study of the epiphany of the face and the mystery of the radical alterity of the feminine with Emmanuel Levinas, to reach the definition provided by Hannah Arendt: “Love is an event from which a story or a fate can occur”.

The course itself is a lecture taught in a large amphitheatre. Moments of discussion with the students will be foreseen after each major part of the course.
For more personalised discussions, duty hours one hour per week will be covered by the professor in charge, from the beginning of the academic year, on Thursdays from 11am to 12pm, after the course. In addition, assistance is offered in weekly tutorial sessions (see philosophy tutorials)

The assessment will be based on a written examination. The questions will focus on the understanding of the major articulations of the course and of the philosophical texts on which the course is based. A thorough and personal reading of the philosophical texts studied in class is therefore required. At the end of the year, the written examination will be accompanied by an essay on one of the issues studied during the course, starting from the reading of at least one philosophical work in its entirety (the list will be distributed in class, early in the second term).

For each part of the course, a selected bibliography will be mentioned.

A detailed course outline for the entire year will be distributed during the first session. Extracts of analysed philosophical texts and course notes will be progressively available via the I-FUSL service.