Theory – Practice
We’re talking about ”the long 19:th century”: after French Revolution until 1914, 1789-1914.
”The short twentieth century” Hobsbawm
1914-1991 (fall of the soviet union)
The great German Idealists had just died:
Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling.
One group that worked in this time was the ”young Hegelians”, leftist progressive Hegelians.
Often portrayed as having been ”led” by Karl Marx.
Another group at the time were the Neo-Kantians, such as Cohen, Natorp and Cassirer.
German Idealism furthermore led to the British Idealists
Such as McTaggart with ”Time theory” and Collingwood’s ”Idea of History”.
Opposing British Idealism were G.E Moore as well as Bertrand Russel.
One reason why Idealism is not popular in GB is because of the philosophies of calculability and such.
Before them were the Utilitarians such as Bentham etc.
In Germany: Romanticisim
Herder, Novalis, Schlegel Brothers, Schleiermacher.
They revolt against the sovereignty of nationality, and want to return to God and ”dark age” aesthetics.
In the periphery of these thinkers, we have Kierkegaard and Nietzsche → Existentialism, post-modernism
The Sciences were also developing during this time:
In physics there was Maxwell with electromagnetic radiation.
In mathematics there was Dedekind (ernst cassirer) and Cantor (Bertrand Russel) who in turn would influence important philosophers.
If a barber shaves everyone in town, who shaves the barber?
/ The liar paradox.
In biology Alexander von Humboldt and Darwin.
Freud and Bergson both draw heavily on Darwin.
Science too had influence on the humanities and social sciences (I mean social science is literally ”created” at this time)
In Sociology: Auguste Comte with Positivism, wanted to ”throw” assumptions away and do philosophy like science.
Furthermore there was emile durkheim and max weber who made important contributions at this time.
In Psychology there was William James (who more or less created Psychology) and Franz Brentano with Psychology from an empirical standpoint (1874).
→ Influenced Husserl heavily.
In the philosophy of science there was Ernst Mach (1838-1916) → Einstein, Logical Positivism and Marxism.
Philosophers with backgrounds in mathematics: Husserl, Frege, Bergson
”Paradigm shift” in the natural sciences with Einstein with the theory of relativity.
An important stream in the literary arts was ”stream of consciousness” or modernism by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Proust.
→ Husserl is heavily influenced by these as well.
Philosophy: Life and Consciousness
Edmund Husserl: founder of phenomenology
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Husserl archive exists in Leuven (A priest transferred all his texts from Freiburg to Leuven in 1938)
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Husserl regarded his philosophy as rigorous science.
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He both considered his own philosophy as science, but also recognised that the sciences generally suffered from a crisis
Sigmund Freud: founder of psychoanalysis
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Trained neurologist
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The underlying theory of ”Unconsciousness”
Henri Bergson: ”Bergsonism” (according to G. Deleuze)
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Mathmeatician-turned philosopher and Nobel Prize Laureate
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Elan vital and evolution.
Commonalities between the three:
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Influential and invent their own kinds of philosophies that hold a critical attitude towards the sciences despite being also grounded in science (self-reflective)
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They were also philosophers of ”life”
Philosophy: The Linguistic Turn
”We cannot speculate on what we cannot see” so therefore language is the most important bit of analysis.
Gottlob Frege: Analytic Philosophy, or rather influenced Wittgenstein and Russel.
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Created the continental-analytic divide
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Created Logicism: mathematics and everything concievable is grounded on logic.
”Someone who wants to learn logic from language is like an adult who wants to learn how to think from a child. When human beins created language, they were at the stage of childish pictorial thinking.” Frege’s letter to Husserl 1906.
Ferdinand de Saussure: Structuralism
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Linguist by trade.
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Course in General Linguistics (1916)
-A famous book that is not a book nor is published by Saussure.
-Detour from Russian formalists to the US (something kind of philosophers)
- Influenced Anthropology with Levi-Strauss, Psychoanalysis with Jaque Lacan, Literary critique with Roland Barthes.
Commonalities
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Sense – Reference contra Sign – Signifier/Signified
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Are formally similar but are situated in very different contexts and are not technically the same.
Vita Activa
The short twentieth cenury
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An age of crisis and decline
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Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West (1918)
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The fall of the Faustian culture (German mythological figure who deals with Satan for magic)
Leo Strauss (1899 – 1973) → Conservatism
Theodor Adorno (1903 – 1969) → Critical Theory
Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) → Republicanism
Simone de beauvoir (1908) → Feminism
Isaiah Berlin → Liberalism
All texts we’re reading about these guys are from the 50s
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The war is over
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Germany is recovering
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The cold war is only beginning
→ They get ample time to reflect on what is really going on in Europe
eg. Totalitarian regimes, Holocaust (The banality of Evil)
Political philosophy is called into question, which is what Strauss and Berlin is defending.
”The political” in an everyday, existential sense: feminism from Beauvoir (”What is a woman?”, an annoying question according to her)
Actual like class information
The seminar format:
(First two weeks will be lectures)
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Background introduction
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Student presentations + discussions
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Short break
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Student presentations + discussions
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Wrapping up (The effects of texts we’ve been talking about)
Oral presentation make up 15% of the whole grade.
In groups of 3-5:
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You all prepare together; at least 2 of you present, and the rest take questions.
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Group formations place in the second week.
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Each class has two group presentations, and each presentation takes 15 min.
In the end of the semester we submit a written paper (25% of grade)
Around 2000 words, Topic from the material covered in seminar (but not the same as presented)
The topic should be formulated as a clearly formulated research question.
Two deadlines:
December 20:th: If you write on Husserl, Frege, Saussure, Bergson, Freud
January 6:th: Strauss, Berlin, Arendt, Adorno, Beauvoir