PHIL 215 - Phenomenology & Existential Thought

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

The twentieth century was a time of enormous social change. Witness both to unprecedented human-made atrocity and ingenuity, philosophers felt compelled to transform their discipline to meet the new cognitive and ethical demands of their historical experience. The founders of phenomenology and existentialism considered their intellectual movements to be revolutionary upheavals of a philosophy, practiced by the previous generation, that had become outdated.

Existentialists were acutely aware of the contemporary person’s sense of despair and dislocation. They provided a philosophical explanation of this consciousness that took the most advanced historical, anthropological, and psychological considerations into account. Not only this: they also hoped to enable their readers and students to discover in these negative experiences the true sources of their freedom. The phenomenological tradition began with a different emphasis: it aspired to a living science that could renew ordinary people’s interest in knowledge and culture. Phenomenologists developed a novel descriptive method as the organ of this philosophy.

In our class, as much emphasis falls on why existentialists and phenomenologists philosophized as they did as on their central concepts. We read about their ideas on freedom, death, and despair, as well as on time, objective knowledge, and the relationship between self and others. Core authors include Camus, De Beauvoir, Fanon, Husserl, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. The Department.

Prerequisite(s): One 100-level Philosophy course or permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS