PY READING GROUPS 2009/10
Autumn 2009-2010
Weeks One to Five
Nietzsche’s Early Essays
The question of objectivity was an important one for the early Nietzsche. Is objectivity simply a given structure of the world or is it something which has been constructed and has to be understood in light of more original dynamics? In this reading group we will read some of Nietzsche’s early essays in light of the way that Nietzsche can be seen to draw into question the idea of a merely given historical or scientific objectivity. All texts are read in English but simultaneous readings in the German will be supported for those who are interested. T.Colony
Alain Robbe-Grillet, “Jealousy” (1957)
The narrator, such as he is, must be a seething cauldron of feeling. His wife is dallying with Franck, the owner of the banana plantation next to his. The narrator spends the whole story in delivering evidence of their complicity. But in the style of the “new novel” of the late fifties and sixties, he is obsessively objective. Or rather, he is trying to convince himself of his own objectivity. Dispensing with traditional literary devices such as plot, narrative and chronology, the “new novel” sees story subordinated to structure, with the significance of objects more important than human action. One of the most ambitious aesthetic programs of the last hundred years. B.Macaes
Weeks Six to Ten
René Descartes, ”Meditations”
Descartes' Meditations is one of a small group of books that has profoundly shaped our world. Strangely enough, this book which endeavors to demonstrate "the existence of God and the distinction of the soul from the body" lays the foundation for modern mathematical science. We will read the six meditations closely and try to understand the new world that is being presented. On the seventh day we will rest. J.Robinson
Michel Foucault, “The Order of Things” (1966)
This is the book with which Foucault established his international reputation. The later works will do no more than develop one and the same thesis: the death of the idea of the human subject and the humanist view according to which the subject is not a part of the natural order. With the rise of the human sciences, man becomes an object of study in the same way as every natural phenomenon. This opens the way for the extended use and control of human beings. What is the future of the human sciences and of the vision of mankind they profess? Foucault investigates their origins, their reciprocal links, and the philosophy supporting them. B.Macaes
Winter 2009-2010
Weeks One to Four
Freud’s Dora
Psychological thriller, detective story and aporetic dialogue in one, Freud’s first published clinical study of a patient he called “Dora” dramatically illustrates the search for objective understanding of charged interpersonal situations, hence of the truth about oneself and each other. Over the course of 4 weeks we shall read Freud’s analytic account of the Dora case, alongside a selection of critical and interpretive essays. EWA ATANASSOW
Harry Frankfurt’s The Reasons of Love
Is the emotion of love a response to perceived lovable qualities such as intelligence, beauty, or a good sense of humor? In The Reasons of Love (2004), a prominent contemporary American philosopher argues that we do not love for reasons; rather, “Love is itself, for the lover, a source of reasons.” An interesting consequence of this argument is the claim that “coming to love oneself is the deepest and most essential . . . achievement of a serious and successful life.” We closely examine Frankfurt’s arguments step by step. We also consider two articles which object to Frankfurt’s thesis in different ways: “Love’s Authority” by Jonathan Lear and “The True, the Good, and the Lovable: Frankfurt’s Avoidance of Objectivity” by Susan Wolf. DAVID HAYES
Weeks Six to Ten
On Photography
The discovery of photography was integral to the rise of objectivity as a scientific ideal. Photography’s initial promise to be the objective medium par excellence has issued in a rich and complex history of making and thinking about photographic images - a history in which the development of science, technology, and modern art are closely interwoven. In this 5–week reading group we shall reflect on the problem of objectivity in relation to art, by considering a set of classic and contemporary essays that chart the evolution of photography and its self-understanding. EWA ATANASSOW
Richard Moran’s Authority and Estrangement
Is knowing myself a matter of knowing an object, where that object happens to be me? Or is the first-person perspective essentially different from the third-person perspective? This reading group will undertake a critical study of Richard Moran’s Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge, which examines such questions and proposes a particular way of conceiving of the distinctive authority with which we speak for our own thoughts and feelings. One of our central concerns will be the thought that far from promising an ideal instance of self-knowledge, certain ways of taking an objective stance upon myself may express an alienated relation to myself. KATALIN MAKKAI
