|
|
|
FILO1314 - Seminar: reading of philosophical texts II
[2 Q. • 6 ECTS - credits]
| Lecturer :
|
|
Klimis Sophie |
|
|
|
| Language of instruction :
|
|
French |
|
|
|
| Learning outcomes :
|
|
The aim of this seminar is to introduce the students to the in-depth reading of major philosophical texts of the Western tradition.
I. We will take the opposing view of the thesis according to which language is simply the “garment” of the mind, in order to show that the mind requires the discourse to exist.
II. We will also oppose reducing philosophy to a frozen doctrine, which could be limited to a sum of basic dogmas, as well as reducing the sense of the philosophical discourse merely to its statements. On the contrary, we will be attentive to the dynamics of the “thought” and to the necessity to consider an expanded conception of sense, which takes into account the conditions of its enunciation, statement and enunciation can sometimes be in contradiction and bring philosophy to the limits of the “speakable” and thus of the thinkable.
III. Therefore, special attention will be paid to the diversity of the language shaping of philosophy: the poem, the dialogue, the treaty, the system, the aphorism are many different ways of building a line of reasoning.
IV. All philosophy is part of a socio-political context and a historical period, which is a necessary but not sufficient condition to its development, which must be taken into consideration. All philosophy is part of a current of thought or against an established tradition; it refers to precursors, is involved in controversy with contemporaries and may also seek to educate its reader, projected into a hypothetical future. We will try to decode all these, sometimes implicit, inter-dialogic and inter-discursive dynamics, which constitute the depth of sense of philosophical texts.
V. It is through this attention to the complexity of how philosophical texts are constructed, that we can aim at a more detailed understanding of their objects. Each seminar will thus be devoted to the elucidation of the key-concepts of a philosopher, as well as to the study of a central theme of his thought.
|
|
|
|
| Prerequisites :
|
|
The students should have followed the seminar I. The only prerequisites are those of academic work: aptitude for critical work, ability to question and distance oneself from the chosen training. |
|
|
|
| Course contents :
|
|
The content of the seminar varies from one year to the other. Examples of themes:
1. The metamorphoses of dialectics and the status of political science in Plato's work. Reading of the “Statesman” dialogue.
2. How to produce the theory of “human things” according to Aristotle? The specificity of the political method and the classification of human knowledge in the first book of “Nicomachean Ethics” and in the first book of “Politics”.
3. God or the cogito, which is the first principle for Descartes? The tribulations of the search for a way of thinking, from the “Rules for the Direction of the Mind” and the “Unfinished Dialogue on Truth” to “Metaphysical Meditations”.
4. The aphoristic criticism of traditional metaphysics and the archaeology of the “will to power” in the three first parts of Nietzsche's “Beyond Good and Evil”.
|
|
|
|
| Mode of delivery :
|
|
Introduction and conclusion sessions by the professor. One hour oral presentation for each student, followed by an hour of discussion with the group and the professor.
|
|
|
|
| Assessment methods and criteria :
|
|
Oral presentation during the seminar and written work of around ten pages.
|
|
|
|
| Recommended or required reading :
|
|
A selective and commented bibliography will be handed out at the beginning of the seminar. |
|
|
|
| Other information :
|
|
- Selective and commented bibliography
- Philosophical texts that will be analysed during the seminar
- Excerpts of philosophical texts in addition to the studied philosophical texts
- Texts of secondary literature
|
|
|
|
|
