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This course looks at the creative ferment of pre-Socratic philosophy as embodied in enigmatic figures such as Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Xenophanes. The course has two aims. The first is to think through the historical details and the wider meaning of the rise of philosophy in post-Homeric Greece. The second is to highlight the hermeneutic difficulties and exhilarations of reading the text of pre-Socratic philosophy — something to be achieved by close readings of the textual fragments that have come down to us and by reviewing three of the major interpretations of early Greek philosophy available in the work of three greats of the modern European philosophical scene, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Essentially, our problem will be how to understand what a philosophical point of view is by looking at the cultural conditions under which philosophy first came to be practiced and the range of things it involved, from speculation about the natural world, the propounding of paradoxes and the formulation of ethical injunctions all the way up to religious reflection and the critique of custom and myth.

Recommended Readings:
Nietzsche, Friedrich, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan (Chicago: Regnery, 1962)
This text is also available online in an earlier translation at http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/ptra.htm.

For Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy occupied a special place among his works: at times he repudiated its conclusions, at other times he claimed that it was his first revaluation of values, and still again the themes of tragedy, music, Socrates and the Dionysian would reappear in varying manifestations throughout his philosophy. This course will delve into the detail of The Birth of Tragedy, and relate its year of publication, 1872, to the themes of a failed cultural revolution in the spirit of the Greeks.

The Birth of Tragedy represents one of Nietzsche's most ambitious philosophical projects. Through a combination of philology/history and philosophy, he endeavoured to investigate the pre-Socratic culture of tragedy, the account of which he thought would reinvigorate Europe past the scientific paradigm of reason into Dionysian ecstasy. Of particular interest is his transformation of the Will as understood by Schopenhauer (laying the groundwork for the later theme of will to power), his contrast of intuition with concept and the all important worldview of music and tragedy as the vehicle whereby the terrors and horrors of existence could be simultaneously known and affirmed.

This is an introductory course. Some knowledge of Nietzsche's philosophy or of the history of philosophy is preferable, but not assumed. Students should bring a copy of The Birth of Tragedy (Cambridge edition preferred) and a course reader with secondary materials will be provided.

Monday: The Year 1872 — Europe, history and philosophy at the time of The Birth of Tragedy
Tuesday: Myth, Madness and Music — the Dionysian and the Apollonian in dialectic
Wednesday: Tragedy and the Affirmation of Existence — the "miracle of the Hellenic Will"
Thursday: The Decline of Tragedy — the daemon called Socrates
Friday: Science, Art and Other Illusions — overcoming Schopenhauer toward a new tragic age

Recommended Readings:
Knox, Bernard, "Introduction", in Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Viking Press, 1982)

Monday: What is the Best Way of Life?
In this lecture, after some methodological preliminaries (for no, we are not smarter than Plato), we will begin by looking at Aristophanes' famous criticism of Socrates and philosophy in the hilarious play, Clouds. Via a brief look at the Euthyphro and Apology of Socrates, the claim that Plato's oeuvre can be read as an 'apology for philosophy' as a bios or way of life will be raised. In this light, we will turn to the REPUBLIC, the heart of the first half of the course. Having noted the setting and apparently bizarre structure of the text, we will proceed into Book 1, noting that the text asks two questions: what is justice? And: is it better to live an unjust life or a life of justice? In the second hour of day 1, we will examine the second of these questions, which goes to Socrates' central question raised here by Thrasymachus: what is the best way of life?
Students who wish to are encouraged to read Republic, books 1-II and books VIII-IX

Tuesday: What is Justice? (And what's love got to do with it?)
We ascend towards the heart of Republic and the Platonic conception of politics and philosophy. On this day, we consider the dialogue's first framing question: what is justice? The solution of Glaucon's 'shorter way' to answer this question is raised, ramparts and all--although Socrates indicates that he is unsure whether there is enough light on this way to yield anything much. The infamous 'Platonic' proposition that injustice will not cease until philosophers are kings or kings philosophers will be raised and examined, with Glaucon at Socrates' side. Following the text into its heart in book VI, we will look at the education of Glaucon's philosophical guardians and what has been taken to be Plato's ontology of the ideas, above all of which is ho agathos: the good.
The second half of the lecture moves from an analysis of the famous 'cave eikon' at the start of Republic Book VII into another nocturnal, quasi-Orphic setting: the banquet described in Plato's wonderful dialogue on love: Symposium. Here, with drinks in hand, we will raise a question seemingly abstracted from by Republic: what is eros, and what place might it have in philosophy or the good political city? We will also not fail to notice who is in attendance at the party: one Aristophanes (Whom we met in day 1), and also Agathon (the good), a tragedian--the very figures whom we might see as holding up the ideals for the Greek citizens to emulate. Finally, another character will burst in, who crashes the party: the tyrannical, erotic figure of Alcibiades, a politician who got Socrates, and Athens, into a good deal of trouble.
Students who wish to are encouraged to preread as much as they can of Republic, II-VII and Symposium, especially 197a and beyond (Socrates' speech and Alcibiades' interruption).

Wednesday (First Hour): The Ancient Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry
Plato's Symposium ends with Socrates lecturing a very drunk tragedian and comedian about how the best poet should be able to write both tragedy and comedy. Why? How does this sit with the old chestnut that Plato wanted all poets out of the ideal city, based on one line of Republic X? In this first hour, we can draw in some threads. Is Republic meant to be read literally (whatever that would mean), or as a piece of magisterial, political poetry, one pitched to upset or override the Homeric orbit? Is Glaucon's city a political ideal for Plato or anyone sensible, and if not, what might Plato have wanted Glaucon (and thereby us) to see concerning the nature of politics? Can the philosopher who ascends out of the cave towards truth ever meet anything but a Socratic fate when he descends again to speak to his more worldly fellows? On the third day, these questions will be raised.
Students who wish to are encouraged to read Republic X

Wednesday (Second Hour): O My Prophetic Soul!
Taking the baton from Dr Sharpe, we shall begin our journey in the metaphysics of Plato with the poets. The works of Homer and Sophocles in particular are rich with examples of wisdom that shall allow us to get a foothold in types of knowledge that have dropped off the radar of modern science. We shall discuss in a preliminary way the relation of such wisdom and the soul as it occurs throughout a variety of Ancient Greek sources in order grasp the background of some of Plato's own battles.
Students are encouraged to read the 13th book of the Odyssey and/or Sophocles' Antigone.

Thursday: The Sensible and the Intelligible
Aristotle can often be more forthcoming that his teacher and so we shall begin by examining some of the positions that the two share as well their disagreements regarding the ideas. We can then proceed to collocate many of Plato's most explicit statements on the central metaphysical arguments from such dialogues as the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic 7. We shall finish with brief examination of the most curious of dialogues, the Cratylus, specifically in light of the material it shares with the Theaetetus.
Students are encouraged to read the Republic VII (521b-541b), Phaedo (74a-75d, 78c-84c, 89d-91b, but especially 96a-103a)

Friday: The Theaetetus
Our last day shall be given over entirely to the study of the Theaetetus, a favourite text of the anglo-american literature because of its resonance with contemporary epistemology. We journey alongside the young Theaetetus as he attempts to answer Socrates' question 'what is knowledge (episteme)?' All of Theaetetus' answers, 'knowledge is perception', 'knowledge is true opinion', 'knowledge is true opinion with a further distinguishing statement', are found in the course of the dense dialectical examination to fail. Is there some hidden assumption behind Theaetetus' failure? What are the assumptions in our normal mode of life that cause a black spot when faced with metaphysical issues?
Students are encouraged to read the Theaetetus (especially 151e-160e)

Monday
The Origins - and Banal Malignity - of Totalitarianism This lecture will look at Arendt’s two great encounters with totalitarianism, and its progenitors, The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem. A structuring contrast will be made between Arendt’s account of totalitarianism, which emphasises its unprecedented nature, and accounts which place fascism and Sovietism into civilisational philosophies of history (for example, the later Frankfurt School). We will look at what Arendt has to say about the origins of totalitarianism, its differences from previous forms of tyrannical regime, and the structuring place of ideology and terror in its reproduction. In the second half of the lecture, we shall then look at Arendt’s controversial argument about Adolf Eichmann, the key bureaucrat in organising the Nazi holocaust. What does Arendt mean by the ‘banality’ of evil? And how can this alleged banality fit with her earlier accounts of the monstrousness of totalitarian regimes?

Tuesday
The Human Condition, Between Past and Future Tuesday’s lecture will look at the work for which Arendt is most famous: her 1958 work The Human Condition. We will look at The Human Condition as a response to totalitarianism, and the crises of modernity Arendt had uncovered in her earlier works. Structuring emphasis falls on Arendt’s phenomenological distinction between types of human action - labor, work, praxis - and her remarkable critique of Western philosophy’s alleged forgetting of praxis. The final part of the lecture will be devoted to raising questions concerning Arendt’s retrieval of a type of political action, which she accuses Western political philosophy of forgetting, at first with political intent, and then through weight of tradition. Is Arendt’s account of political praxis, with its idealisation of the ancient Greeks, another modern case of ‘polis envy’? Is the type of direct democracy it would seem to indicate what Arendt desired, or what we should desire, or is it an impractical invitation to the type of ‘tyranny of the majority’ she opposed?

Wednesday
On Revolution and Political Action This lecture will look at Arendt’s great work On Revolution. Structuring emphasis falls on Arendt’s contrast between the French revolution and the American revolution, and her disdainful account of what she calls ‘the social question’, aligning it with the decline of the Jacobins into Terror. We will then look at Arendt’s account of the American revolution, a distinctly modern moment in which she espies an exemplar of the type of founding political praxis she is concerned to valorise. Emphasis will also be placed on essays on education, tradition, freedom and authority in Arendt’s magnificent collection Between Past and Future, as we seek to see what, if anything, we might redeem from Arendt’s remarkable political thought.

Thursday
Living with Contingency: Agnes Heller’s Reinterpretation of the Human Condition Thursday’s lecture explores Agnes Heller’s reformulation of Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘the human condition’, a philosophical anthropology that for Heller over-emphasises the primacy of the political at the expense of social, cultural as well as intersubjective understandings of the modern subject. We will locate the way in which Heller establishes a critical dialogue with Arendt’s work via her de-centralized vision of politics in favour of a particular concept of individual agency and the radical potential of everyday life.

Friday
Living with Dissatisfaction: Agnes Heller’s Critique of Freedom as ‘Philosophy of History’ On the final day we will outline Agnes Heller’s critique of the nineteenth-century ‘Philosophy of History’ and her reworking of both Marxist and Hegelian narratives concerning autonomy and the ‘project’ of freedom. Through an exploration of Heller’s theory of modernity we will examine her engagement with Marxism and her reworking of freedom, not as static, teleological end-point but rather as democratic critique and open-ended dialogue.

Recommended Readings:
“The Human Condition,” in Heller, Agnes General Ethics (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1988)

“Contingency,” in Heller, Agnes A Philosophy of History in Fragments (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993)

“An Imaginary Preface to the 1984 Edition of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism” in Heller, Agnes and Ferenc Feher Eastern Left, Western Left (Oxford: Polity, 1987)

“The Dissatisfied Society” in The Power of Shame: A Rational Perspective (London: Routledge, 1985) Arendt, Hannah, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1993)

One of the most innovative thinkers in the second part of the 20th century is Emmanuel Lévinas. However, his philosophical impact has not been taken quite seriously yet, it has been reduced to a certain form of ethics. Another way of reading his work, which is the one we will follow in the seminar, shows that he does not only radically change the way in which humans beings can be understood, but invents a new form of philosophical thought and language, which transforms the very same terms in which we can think. When in his terms, ethics becomes first philosophy the history of western philosophical thought is flipped over and starts anew.

The seminar is meant as an introductory approach to a very difficult work. We will follow 5 different essential concepts which, insofar as they are interwoven, will allow us a glimpse the scope of this philosophy.

Monday
After a short introduction that is focused on the philosophical and biographical background, and the way in which the work emerges, we will clarify the possible signification of the two major titles of the levinasian work: Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. This would be a good introduction to the aims of Lévinas’ Philosophy.

Tuesday
Radical alterity: One of the basic concepts is the idea of the other (autre, autrui), which is embodied in the concept of the Face. What does he mean with it? Why is it metaphysics, and beyond being, and is always in the infinite? Why the face creates transcendental desire? Why the face to face is an irreducible relation? We will attempt to answer those questions.

Wednesday
Radical subjectivity: Contrary to what is a well trodden interpretation of Levinas as obsessed with the other, we will dwell in his fundamental conception of the Same, which is as strong and developed as the idea of alterity. What does he mean with it? As the inversion of the Cartesian cogito? As radical passivity? As hostage? As an-archy? As invested freedom?

Thursday
Insurmountable Relation: what is the ethical relation, how does it originate? The asymmetry of the interpersonal and the diachronical time will be faced. We will see here why ontology is a secondary form of thought. From there we deal with the core concepts of substitution and the Third.

Friday
Saying and the Said: philosophy as trying to remain in the act of saying. From a new language that exploits the inherent limits of comprehension a new form of understanding community, pluralism and justice emerges.

Recommended Readings:
Levinas, Emmanuel, Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (Indiana University Press, 1996)

Twentieth century philosophy saw the emergence of two dominant traditions in Western philosophy: an “analytical school”, influenced by the logical advances of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein and a “continental school”, in large part originating out of the phenomenological research of Husserl and Heidegger. Although the founders of these schools were guided by many common concerns and much recent work has suggested a rapprochement, the divergence in theoretical orientation of the traditions has often tended towards a degree of mutual incomprehension and a lack of dialogue more suggestive of two disciplines than a single discipline containing diverse viewpoints.

The course will be structured around a series of canonical conversations/confrontations between representatives of the analytical and continental traditions. It is anticipated that a critical consideration of these encounters will not only facilitate a better understanding of the historical and theoretical background of the divide but also a considered assessment of its relevance for current work in philosophy.

Monday: Introduction - The Analytical and Continental Divide (Reynolds and Duke)
Tuesday: Husserl and Frege (Duke)
Wednesday: Russell’s Critique of Bergson/Popper’s Critique of Marx (Reynolds)
Thursday: Carnap’s Critique of Heidegger (Duke)
Friday: Derrida and Searle (Reynolds)

Recommended Readings:
C. G. Prado, ed., A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy (Humanity Books, 2003)

This course will begin with a reading of two texts by Leo Strauss, “What is Political Thinking?” and “Classical Political Philosophy”, and takes as its motto Hannah Arendt’s declaration, at the beginning of The Human Condition, of a need for us to stop and think what we are doing.

Despite to a large extent being inspired be the works of the German Jewish political philosopher, Leo Strauss, the course is not intended as a course of Strauss, but rather as an introduction via his work to some of the problems of political philosophy, where this term is supposed to evoke not only the idea of a philosophy of politics, but also of a politics of philosophy. In a literal, rather than grandiloquent sense the course could legitimately be construed as having a metaphilosophical intent, were it not for the fact that the reflexive element of philosophy – what could be regarded as a narcissistic fascination that attempts to transcend narcissism through the very mirror in which the reflection/speculation is observed – is something that belongs precisely to, or even helps to constitute, philosophy qua philosophy – is philosophy’s proper or own tendency. The course is designed to provoke reflections and ultimately to encourage discussion on the purpose, goals and limitations of philosophy, on the relationship between philosophy and politics, and on problems and paradoxes stemming from requirements (set extra- and intra-philosophically) for philosophy to justify itself in the contemporary world. In the course, these problems will be seen to be closely interrelated to the great Platonic philosophical problem of rhetoric, truth and desire (Eros).

Along the way, we will touch of such topics of nature and history: Eros and the psyche, and, in more modern language, on the pleasures of philosophy – why do we philosophise? What is the good of philosophy in the sense of the good at which philosophy aims – to wax Aristotelian, is this good internal or external to the practice of philosophy? If so, in what does this consist? Does it come into conflict with other goals, other tendencies of society, polity, state? In what can we find the ‘usefulness’ of philosophy, its purpose, its end? What, furthermore, is the situation of philosophy, today, in the modern world, in the context of liberal democracy, capitalism, the nature of the modern university? Insofar as these questions obviously open vast receptacles densely packed with cosmic worms, I do not propose more than to introduce an approach to these questions, an introduction to the problems of political philosophy.

Monday: Introduction (comments on Leo Strauss – “What is Political Philosophy”, “Three Waves of Modernity”, Natural Right and History): ‘What is the relationship between philosophy and politics?’ (or, ‘Why is there a relationship between philosophy and politics?’)

Tuesday: Two modern passions as sources of virtue: thinking about the conflict between Hobbes/Locke and Rousseau/Machiavelli. Bourgeois versus citoyen – suggestion that this conflict continues in the manner of Mauss’s Gift. Gift economy alongside capitalist economy. Three waves on the same ‘beach’. Romantic question: how is reconciliation possible?

Wednesday: Further discussion of the relationship between the first and the second waves. The question of reconciliation (Possible inclusion of a discussion of Burke and Spinoza’s Theological Political Treatise, dependent on time).

Thursday: ‘Cynicism and Simulacra’, or ‘Welcome to the Spin-Cycle’ – comments on ‘truth, politics and the third wave’ (Nietzsche and Plato).

Friday: ‘Socratic’ conclusion: Eros, piety, and politics.

Recommended Readings: Strauss, Leo, An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss, ed. Hilail Gilden (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989)

Alain Badiou’s Being and Event, recently translated into English, is a striking and strange addition to the tradition of continental thought. Its key reference points have never before been arranged together: set theoretic mathematics, Mallarmés poetry, Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-Marxist (quasi-Maoist) political thought. Nonetheless, in what is certainly his most important work, Badiou brings these together to form a novel system of thought which in one stroke provides an ontology, an account of the order in being, and the means whereby the subject can change this order.

This course will endeavour to elucidate the structure and central claims of Being and Event. The main lectures will be explicitly devoted to this discussion, while a supplementary class will provide the skeleton of the mathematics that Badiou utilises (these latter classes are highly recommended as illuminative of the main lectures, and why not learn some maths while you’re at it, anyway?).

Recommended Readings:
To be advised

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