IDS 2500 (03) Topics in the Contemporary World [Core 5]
EXISTENTIALISM
Foci: Philosophy, Religion
Spring 2004

What difference does it make whether you exist? Obviously, it makes all the difference–but how?

Are you on your own? Are you free in a meaningful way? Is your existence grounded in anything more fundamental? Is death your absolute end, and if so, how does that affect the meaning of what you are doing now? Are there other existers besides you, and if so, how does their existence interact with or qualify yours? Does a community exist in anything like the way you do?

Beginning with Søren Kierkegaard in the 19th century, a number of the most influential later Western thinkers–especially philosophers, theologians, and literary artists–have adopted "existence" as a leading theme. These thinkers have found it necessary to break through the system of rational thinking to get at the truth of existence. Thus, even while rational thinking continues to develop its great systematic critique and reconstruction of the appearances of ordinary life (indeed, this rationalist program is accepted by many as the very definition of philosophy and of progress), existential thinking becomes a searching critique of rational thinking in turn.

Not coincidentally, the rational fabric of late modern Western society is subjected to tremendous stress in the 20th century--a century of cataclysmic world wars, an emerging danger of nuclear omnicide, and a bitter new awareness of the social poisons of racism and sexism. The existential thinkers attract our attention because they come to grips with these troubles perhaps more powerfully than anyone else.

Our motive to study existentialism, then, is to see how we stand and how we can stand, individually and collectively and historically, in a time of trouble, with a shaken (but perhaps not shattered) faith in reason.

LIBERAL ARTS ABILITIES

This course will be very informative, I trust, but there is more to it than that. The course is an exercise machine to strengthen your thinking, speaking, and writing powers so that you can enter more fully into the life and fellowship of the mind. Like other Millsaps core courses, this one promotes certain broadly relevant abilities:

Reasoning. This is your ability to keep track of differences and similarities, of evidence and lack of evidence, and of your own acts of acceptance and rejection, so that you can draw conclusions about what is true or false, likely or unlikely, consistent or inconsistent. The coursework will challenge and lead you to reason in a sustained way.

Communication. Learning does not take place only in a private laboratory in your head. It depends on conversation. This course will ask you repeatedly to weave your thoughts together with other people's thoughts by oral and written presentation and (most importantly) by response.

Historical consciousness. Besides gathering information about how important elements of human culture have come into existence and spawned consequences, we will strive to understand more substantially how our lives belong to a historical-cultural continuum and how our perceptions, desires, and choices relate to the raveling and unraveling of this larger fabric.

Aesthetic judgment. In this course we will consider how visual and literary art works are able to articulate manners of human existing and to resonate with profound issues inherent in human existing. The student will also have an opportunity to create art of his or her own with this orientation.

Global and multicultural awareness. Existential thinkers are among those who take issues of cultural identity most seriously in principle. We will see how existentialism contributes to current race and gender theory. We will also consider the relationship of Western existentialism to a somewhat analogously motivated movement in East Asia, Zen Buddhism.

Valuing and decision-making. This course is historical, but even moreso it is philosophical, for its ultimate concern is not with what so-called existentialist thinkers and artists have thought is true or best but with what is true or best. So each of us is faced with live philosophical and religious questions, and our work consists of experiments in answering these. You will be asked to articulate your own understanding of these matters and to refine it critically in conversation with the historical sources and your fellow learners.

GRADING

Grading will be based on shorter writing assignments (25%), an Existential Project (25%), two short sectional exams (15%, 15%), and a final exam (20%). A class participation grade will be factored in on top of all that: your course grade will be raised a third of a letter grade for very good participation, or a third of a letter grade will be taken off if you show little evidence in the classroom of engagement with the course. Homework paragraphs and short writing assignments will be graded "check" (possibly "check plus" or "check minus," if they excel or fall short in significant ways). I'll tell you at midterm how your grade is looking in that area. The Existential Project will be letter-graded. (Note: the paper for this project is the one that you can add to your Writing Portfolio.) We'll be talking all along about how to approach writing assignments and exams.

REQUIRED READING

Course readings will be drawn from these required books (plus handouts, often to be distributed by e-mail):

Walter Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
Martin Buber, I and Thou
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be
D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism

SCHEDULE (subject to revision by announcement)

The READ assignments are placed on the day on which they are due. Several times during the semester I may ask you to turn in a PARAGRAPH responding to a question I will pose about a reading or viewing assignment. There are also six WRITE assignments announced in the schedule below. For these I ask for a certain length, measuring by typed pages. A typed page is 250-300 words. Typing is not required, though.

Although this schedule doesn't list class meetings during our fourth hour, Thursdays at 8:00, we may use this time on occasion for special help and make-up sessions.

Week 1: Introduction to course issues.

M 1-12 Introduction to course.
W 1-14 Modern Western civilization as reflected in "Notes from Underground"
READ: Dostoevsky, "Notes from Underground," in Kaufmann
F 1-16 "Notes from Underground," cont.
WRITE: Your own notes from underground (2 pp.)

Week 2: The first proposal for existential thinking: Kierkegaard.

M 1-19 Kierkegaard's religious critique of rationalism.
READ: Kierkegaard, from Fear and Trembling (handout)
W 1-21 Kierkegaard's individuality.
READ: Kierkegaard, in Kaufmann, pp. 85-101
F 1-23 "Subjectivity is the truth."
READ: Kierkegaard, in Kaufmann, pp. 101-115

Week 3: An atheist alternative: Nietzsche.

M 1-26 Nietzsche on "the death of God."
READ: Nietzsche in Kaufmann, pp. 122-133
W 1-28 Nietzsche's critique of Western morality.
READ: Nietzsche, from The Genealogy of Morals (handout)
F 1-30 Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence.
READ: Nietzsche, from Thus Spake Zarathustra (handout)
WRITE: Comparison of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (2 pp.)

Week 4: Religious existentialism after Nietzsche: Buber.

M 2-2 Buber's I and Thou
READ: I and Thou, Part I.
W 2-4 Cont.
READ: I and Thou, Part II.
FILM VIEWING: All Quiet on the Western Front, 7:30 p.m., Olin 100
F 2-6 Cont.
READ: I and Thou, Part III.

Week 5: Karl Jaspers and the philosophical elucidation of Existenz.

M 2-9 Introduction to Jaspers.
READ: Jaspers in Kaufmann, pp. 158-185
W 2-11 Jaspers on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
READ: Jaspers in Kaufmann, pp. 185-211
F 2-13 On "the Encompassing."
READ: Jaspers in Kaufmann, pp. 211-232

Week 6: Heidegger on existence in the context of fundamental ontology.

M 2-16 Introduction to Heidegger.
READ: Heidegger in Kaufmann, pp. 234-241
W 2-18 Nothing in "What is Metaphysics?"
READ: Heidegger in Kaufmann, pp. 242-264
F 2-20 Overcoming metaphysics.
READ: Heidegger in Kaufmann, pp. 265-279
WRITE: Comparison of Jaspers and Heidegger (2 pp.)

Week 7: Existentialism in Protestant theology between the wars.

M 2-23 Karl Barth
READ: Barth, from The Epistle to the Romans (handout)
W 2-25 Rudolf Bultmann
READ: Bultmann, from "The Concept of Revelation in the New Testament" (handout)
F 2-27 Emil Brunner
READ: Brunner, from Truth as Encounter (handout)

Week 8: Existentialist themes in visual art and literature.

M 3-1 Visual arts.
MIDTERM DUE.
W 3-3 Literature.
READ: Rilke and Kafka, in Kaufmann, pp. 134-151
F 3-5 Literature, cont.
READ: Sartre, Nausea, pp. 1-70

Week 9: Sartre.

M 3-8 Cont.
READ: Nausea, pp. 70-126
CONCEPT FOR EXISTENTIAL PROJECT DUE.
W 3-10 Cont.
READ: Nausea, pp. 126-178
WRITE: Review of Nausea (2 pp.)
F 3-12 Sartre's philosophy: Being and Nothingness.
READ: Sartre in Kaufmann, pp. 299-328

SPRING BREAK

Week 10: Sartre, cont.

Week 11: Beauvoir.

M 3-29 Is there an existentialist ethics?
READ: Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, pp. 7-73
W 3-31 Cont.
READ: Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, pp. 74-115
F 4-2 Cont.
READ: Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, pp. 115-159

Week 12: Existentialist themes in Christian thought after Heidegger and Sartre: Tillich.

M 4-5 Tillich's theology.
READ: Tillich, The Courage to Be, pp. 32-63
W 4-7 Cont.
READ: The Courage to Be, pp. 123-190
FILM VIEWING: Ikiru, 7:30 p.m., Olin 100
F 4-9 GOOD FRIDAY

Week 13: Zen.

M 4-12 Introduction to Zen
EXISTENTIAL PROJECT DUE (2 copies)
W 4-14 Introduction to Zen, cont.
READ: Suzuki, "Zen in Relation to Buddhism Generally" [all Suzuki assignments are in Zen Buddhism]
PEER REVIEW OF EXISTENTIAL PROJECT DUE (2 copies)
F 4-16 Zen, cont.
READ: Suzuki, "Satori, or Enlightenment"

Week 14: Zen, cont.

FINAL VERSION OF EXISTENTIAL PROJECT DUE MONDAY, APR. 26

FINAL EXAM DUE THURSDAY, APR. 29

THE EXISTENTIAL PROJECT (consisting of or incorporating a 7-10 pp. paper)

In this project you will explore on your own terms the existential situation of human individuals and communities. You can articulate this situation using any of various means and media, discursive or non-discursive, including any art form. You should be sensitive to the dimensions and issues of existence that have been examined in our coursework, but you are not obliged to base yourself on any already-articulated perspective. Your project may wholly consist of a philosophical reflection, but if not, you must incorporate within the project a philosophical reflection upon it; that will be the paper you can add to your Writing Portfolio.

You will submit a CONCEPT (1 p.) for this project by Mar. 8, and get advice on it from the instructor.

The first FULL VERSION of your project is due on Apr. 12. This will be reviewed by a fellow student and by the instructor.

THE FINAL VERSION of the project, revised, is due Apr. 26.