PHI 317: Existentialist Thought and Literature

Sick–Class Cancelled

JST — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 02:37:25 +0000

I am feeling quite sick and will probably be worse tomorrow morning. Class is cancelled for tomorrow, Friday, April 23rd. If you want to know your grade on the second paper just e-mail me and I’ll e-mail you back with it.

We’ll meet back in class on Monday to discuss Elegies 1-3. Further info to follow on Monday.

Third (Final) Paper and Other Announcements

JST — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 03:37:20 +0000

Here are the paper topics for the final paper in this course, due in my mailbox by 4:00 PM on Thursday, May 6th. The mailbox is located in Patterson Office Tower, on the fourteenth floor, room 1443. Be advised that my mailbox is the one above where it says “TRULLINGER.” If you do not put the paper in the right mailbox, you will be deducted however many late points correspond to whenever I do get the paper. Since grades are due the following Monday, that does not leave me much time to grade, so please make whatever arrangements are necessary to get your paper in on time. (Reminder: I do not accept e-mailed papers.)

PHI 317 Topics for the Third Paper

As always, please e-mail me if you have questions about what the prompt is asking, or would like some guidance.

Also: since this is a very busy time for us all, the third precis (on Heidegger) will now be due on Monday, April 26th. Please use this extra time wisely.

Finally: in the interest of really grasping what is going on in Rilke’s poetry, I have decided to take a slower pace and cut out the readings from his Sonnets to Orpheus. This means that the reading schedule will now focus solely on the Duino Elegies from this point forward:

Friday, April 23rd: Duino Elegies 1-3, pp. 151-167 odd

Monday, April 26th: Duino Elegies 4-6, pp. 169-185 odd

Wednesday, April 28th: Duino Elegies 7-8, pp. 187-197 odd

Friday, April 30th: Duino Elegies 9-10, pp. 199-211 odd

Third Precis

JST — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:24:54 +0000

Below you will find the instructions for the third precis, on the relationship between dwelling and creativity in Heidegger. As I indicate in the instructions, in clarifying how a creative work allows you to dwell in the world, you will first need to spell out how our ordinary view of things sees them as disconnected from one another, as indifferent to one another. As harmonious dwelling in the world requires that the world be tied together and not disconnected, it will help to focus your analysis on the way that the special thing in question (the bridge, the farmhouse, the Greek temple, Van Gogh’s painting) allows the other things in the “world” around it to be tied to each other and take on a special sense of belonging and nearness (i.e., that this is a bona fide place, a home). To that end, a good deal of your precis should consist in careful description of the ways the world makes sense, as a whole, through the thing in question.

PHI 317 Precis 3

The precis is due in-class on Friday, April 23rd. As always, e-mail me if you have questions. jtrullin@uky.edu

Van Gogh Painting, Heidegger’s Cabin

JST — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:41:05 +0000

As I indicated in class, once you get to Heidegger’s discussion of Van Gogh’s painting of a peasant’s shoes (p. 158 of Basic Writings), I highly recommend that you go to the link below

http://www.paintingmania.com/Arts/Big/3829_big.jpg

and simply look at the painting for a while before reading onward. I find that whenever I read writing about visual art, it helps to read one sentence and then gaze at the artwork for a little while, trying to see what the author saw in the piece. I don’t return to reading until I get something close to the same feeling that the author reports he or she has in response to the artwork. I then read one more sentence, look at the painting, and start the process over again. While this can take some time, it helps me to experience the artwork in the most absorbing way possible, as we are not always sensitive to the slow pace at which these works were meant to be taken. While it can sometimes be laborious, putting in the time in this way allows me to have the “aha!” moment in which the artwork is not only beautiful but also evocative. Hans-Georg Gadamer, a student of Heidegger’s who went on to become an insightful philosopher in his own right, likens this moment of realization to a statement of Goethe’s: “So true, so full of being!” Some amount of reflecting on why Goethe’s statement fits art can itself shed a great deal of light on what Heidegger is after in “The Origin of the Work of Art.”

On a related note: our discussion of the Black Forest farmhouse in today’s class made me think about Heidegger’s own family hut in a secluded area of the Black Forest, on a mountain named Todtnauberg. The link below will lead you to a clip wherein his son Hermann and his old student Gadamer discuss Heidegger’s self-styled ruralism. While the documentary that this is extracted from is not without its problems, I think you might find the clip interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quv4wUvvYIU

Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism

JST — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:38:03 +0000

Since Heidegger believes that words in one language are not always easily translatable into another language, he sometimes leaves them untranslated so as to keep the word’s original sense intact. This is an important strategy for Heidegger, as a great deal of his argument rests on the idea that across the various cultures in history there have been profoundly different conceptions of Being (and, therefore, of things that relate to Being, such as “nature” or “mind”). In order to uncover these differences, we have to work hard at seeing how these different meanings were in play in different ways throughout history. This is why Heidegger talks at length about words, and what we–as twentieth century people raised within a modern European culture–can do to understand ancient ways of looking at the world in the ways they themselves understood it. While it may be impossible to fully comprehend the world in the exact same way the Greeks did, we can slowly approximate that by carefully observing how they talked about the world. When we are successful in doing so, Heidegger claims, we will not only see the differences in various historical ways of being in the world, we will also have a breakthrough concerning what is true about each epoch’s way of looking at existence. Therefore, it is imperative that we keep digging deeper and deeper into what we mean when we say “nature,” or “humanity”–which is precisely Heidegger’s central concern in the “Letter on Humanism.”

Thus, Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism” uses a number of foreign words that are left untranslated. To help make the text less daunting, I have gone through the essay and translated all those foreign words and phrases for you. Please use this glossary as you read.

PHI 317 Glossary for Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism

Topics for the Second Paper

JST — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 07:15:29 +0000

Here are the topics for the second paper, found in the link below. It is due in-class on Friday, April 9th.

PHI 317 Topics for the Second Paper

As before, I welcome your questions about the essay and am willing to look at any drafts you might have (although I cannot guarantee I will have time to do a fine-grained reading of it). Please e-mail me if you have questions: jtrullin@uky.edu

Midterm Grades Posted

JST — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:26:24 +0000

I have entered your midterm grades into the university system. You ought to be able to check them online.

The grade that you find is tabulated from your score on the first precis, your first essay, and your current participation grade. This means that for some of you your grade may be lower than you expected, but keep in mind that there will be other assignments ahead. (I have not yet graded your second precis, as they were turned in just today.) There is therefore no cause for panic, but if you have any questions about how your score is tabulated, please e-mail me at: jtrullin@uky.edu

Have a good spring break, and don’t forget what Sartre says about freedom and responsibility going hand in hand!

Second Precis and Reading Changes

JST — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:54:01 +0000

The second precis will be due in-class next week, on Friday, March 12th. Please access the assignment by clicking on the link below.

PHI 317 Precis 2

Also, in light of our class discussion, there will be some changes in the reading schedule for next week. For next week, read:

Monday, 3/8: Sartre, “Patterns of Bad Faith,” Essays in Existentialism, pp. 160-80

Wednesday, 3/10: Sartre, ”What is Writing?” Essays in Existentialism, pp. 303-321

Friday, 3/12: Sartre, “Why Write?” “What is Literature?” and Other Essays, pp. 48-69 (handout)

As always, let me know if you have any questions. jtrullin@uky.edu

An Existentialist Masterpiece

JST — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:17:52 +0000

A very special opportunity is coming up for us all: the Balagula Theatre Company will be performing Sartre’s wonderful play No Exit right here in Lexington. I highly encourage each and every one of you to see this play, especially since we (unfortunately) don’t have enough time in the semester to read it ourselves–and since plays are meant to be seen! This particular company performed a Beckett play earlier in the year, and the current production of No Exit is part of a series of absurdist plays this year.

If you attend the play and write an analysis of the existential themes running throughout it (minimum 2 pages), I will take that score and use it to replace your lowest precis score. Be sure to hang on to your ticket stub and attach it to the paper, which will be due (at latest) upon our return from spring break (which is when we will have finished our reading of Sartre).

Full details on showtimes, reservations and prices are available at this website:

http://www.balagula.com/productions/NoExit/NoExit.php

All performances will be at 8 PM at Natasha’s Cafe in downtown Lexington (at the corner of Main Street and Esplanade Alley, on the other side of the street from the Kentucky Theatre). The play runs from February 21-24, 28, and then March 1-3.

Note that the play premieres tomorrow night, and that this Monday night is “pay what you can night,” where you can get in for anything you can pay instead of the usual rate of $15.00.

Hegel Reading and Paper Extension

JST — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:05:37 +0000

Given the complexity of Hegel’s thought and its importance for understanding Heidegger and Sartre, we will probably not get around to Kafka’s story “The Silence of the Sirens” (which is itself complex and requires a good deal of analysis). For that reason, Monday’s reading will consist solely of Hegel’s classic piece, “With What Must the Science Begin?” and the first “moment” from the Science of Logic:

read Hegel’s Science of Logic, pp. 67-78, 82-85, 105-8 (translated by Miller, Prometheus Books edition)

Also: the papers will now be due in-class on this upcoming Wednesday, February 24th, instead of the 22nd. Be sure to use this extra time to hone and polish your paper, and keep up with the reading! While the readings will be challenging, I am well aware of that and will do my best to make things clear in class. As a result, while you should read the text slowly and carefully (as you always want to do in philosophy), it’s more important that you finish the reading than that you understand everything going on (since there will be elements that anybody will miss on their first reading).

Topics for the First Paper

JST — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:04:48 +0000

Here are the topics for the first paper, due in-class on Monday, February 22nd. Please read the first page very carefully, as it lays out the general instructions for the paper and offer some advice about how to write it.

Also note that if none of the listed topics interests you, you may propose your own paper topic, which can cover anything we have read so far. In order to write on your own topic, you need to e-mail me your proposed idea (further details can be found under the heading, “Topic 6″).

Above all, let me stress that you are welcome to come by my office hours for advice and help about writing the paper. I’d also be happy to read a draft of your paper, and while I cannot guarantee that I will be able to srutinize every detail of it, I can at least let you know if you are heading in the right direction. My e-mail address is jtrullin@uky.edu .

PHI 317 Topics for the First Paper

First Precis

JST — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:02:14 +0000

Below you will find a link that allows you to access the description of the first precis assignment, due in-class on Wednesday, January 27th. Be sure to read the prompt very carefully, and spend a lot of time thinking about Pascal before sitting down in front of the computer. You do not need a fancy introduction or conclusion; in fact, I would advise you not to have either a conclusion or an introduction. Just begin with your thesis statement and start diving into your analysis. You will probably find it more difficult to pare down what you have to say than to come up with something to say.

PHI 317 Precis 1

Please e-mail me if you have any questions.

jtrullin@uky.edu