Knowledge and Subjectivity (based in Sociology)

This module introduces students to key concepts and texts in modern European philosophy, taking the question of subjectivity as its guiding thread.

The module explores, in more or less historical sequence, some of the most influential understandings of the subject, and of the possibilities and limitations of knowledge, produced by modern philosophy. Beginning with a critical exploration of the way in which René Descartes’ ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (I think therefore I am) has been seen as the inauguration of modern philosophy, we investigate different ways of posing the problem of the knowing subject: Spinoza’s affirmation of there being only one substance, the empiricism of John Locke and David Hume and the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In the latter part of the course, we then turn to some profound challenges to dominant models of knowledge and subjectivity, formulated in the late 19^th and throughout the 20^th and 21st century: Hegel and Marx’s attempts of undoing the neat separation between subject and world; Friedrich Nietzsche’s assault on the very notion of the subject; Foucault’s rejection of an essential self in the name of its historical constitution; Walter Mignolo’s and others’ decolonial challenge to the very idea of a universal and simultaneously neutral ‘knower’ of ‘the’ world; and finally Luce Irigaray’s feminist turn against the masculinist subject of philosophy. Through a close consideration of these philosophers, students are introduced to key notions and sub-fields in philosophy: epistemology, ontology, phenomenology, critique, and the distinction between the empirical and the transcendental – as well as the political and social repercussions of seemingly abstract philosophical debates.

Aesthetics (based in ECW) 

This module introduces students to key concepts and texts in philosophical aesthetics and the historical and critical role it plays in political philosophy. The first half of the module focuses on the sustained and intensive reading of (primarily) the first part of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (pertaining to aesthetic judgment), key debates involved in the historical development of aesthetics as a science of sensation and judgments of taste, the ramifications for the theory of moral sentiments and the genesis of art criticism in early German Idealism, and contemporary interpretations of the significance of Kant’s argument for human freedom and the autonomy of reason. The second half of the module examines the aftermath of the revolution Kant introduced by focusing attention on various responses—and criticisms—that have arisen since the publication of the third Critique. Through close textual engagement, we will explore a variety of distinct views on the Kantian legacy, including: the question of representation; civil imagination; technology and the aestheticization of politics; race and the knowledge of freedom; and art and economy.