Face-to-face , second term, 30 hours of exercises.

Second term
Thursday from 14:00 to 16:00 at Préfecture P60

French

The aim of this seminar wants students to go further into reading major philosophical texts of Western tradition. The purposes carry on comparing and broadening exegetical debates.
I. A learning strategy is to take the opposing view to the thesis that “pure” thinking exists behind a “ curtain of words” (Berkeley) in order to prove that the latter does exist only in its several discursive uses.

II. This seminar wants to avoid rigid philosophical doctrine, which boils down to an amount of dogmas. It also aims at paying attention to thinking process and the necessity to bear in mind a broader meaning conception which takes into account the conditions of its statement. Studying a statement could lead someone to the frontier of language and thinking.

III. From then on, a wide range of philosophical language statements is worthy of attention: dialogues, treaties, systems, aphorisms, poems are different ways of shaping a thinking path.

IV. Each philosophy is part of a social, political and historical period which is necessary -but not sufficient- to its elaboration. Each philosophy is part of a thinking line or against established traditions. It refers to forerunners ; It stirs controversy with contemporaries, and can also look for educating its readers and learners. We are going to decode all these interactive dynamics -sometimes implied-, which constitute the whole meaning of philosophical texts.

V. Paying attention to the complexity of philosophical texts, we could aim at a better and subtler understanding of their meaning. Each seminar is so going to be dedicated to the clarification and the study of a philosopher's thinking with his key-concepts.

VI. We will try to commit to keen exegetical talks on learning where to stand in a debate and on confronting opposing comments.

VII. We will also look for emphasizing a more comparative dimension: It won't be about looking for methodical or thematic transhistorical invariants ; on the contrary, we will need to attempt at showing the differences as well as the shift-keying and reinterpreting from one philosophical theory to another.

VIII. At last, we will try -to the extent possible- to read original works and show loss of meaning due to translations.

For the Bachelor in Philosophy :

None

The subject of the seminar changes every year. For instance:
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”.
2015-2016 : What is a true human life ? Comparaison between bios praktikos/bios theorètikos in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and vita activa/vita contemplativa in Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition. 

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.

Oral presentation within the seminar and an around 9,000 words essay. Interactive talk participation.

A selected and commented bibliography will be handed out in class.

complementary philosophical texts will be closely read and subject to critical scrutiny.