PHIL 340 - Seminar in Continental Philosophy

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2022/23b: Dialectics and Deconstruction. This course engages with the encounters between dialectical philosophy and deconstruction. Both dialectics and deconstruction eschew being reduced to a ‘method’ somehow imposed on any subject matter from without, and both begin with the claim that their mode of reading and interpretation begin immanently from the material or issues studied. What, then, are they and how do they relate (if at all) to one another? How does deconstruction approach dialectics, and what is the dialectical response to deconstruction? What, if anything, is the third element mediating or relating one to the other? Starting with sections from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the course examines how dialectics and the labor of the negative operate and mediate subject and object. Moving between dialectical and anti-, or non-dialectical thinking, the course then moves to Derridean deconstruction and fundamental non-concepts associated with it. Topics addressed include: philosophical writing, concept creation, subject-object relations, history and temporality, politics, and Readings include the works of: Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Kojève, Fanon, Adorno, Derrida, Nancy, Malabou, Zizek, Comay, among others. Osman Nemli.

One 3-hour period.

Course Format: CLS