NEW COURSES FOR Spring 2008
Phil 315/415-Topics: Plato's Symposium MWF 2-2:50-McLarty
Enjoy 2 very different dinners with Socrates: one described by his friend the historian Xenophon, and one by his follower, the philosopher Plato.
Phil 315/415- Topics: Freud and Philosophy TR 10-11:15-Piven
In his work on sexuality, dreams, religion, and culture, Freud radically altered the way we see ourselves, consciousness, intention, motivation, and rationality. The conscious self was no longer a sufficient barometer of its own desires and purposes, and nor were perceptions of oneself or the world reliable. Freud illuminated our irrationality, complexity, and the elusiveness of understanding ourselves. Our perceptions and ideas were driven by desire, fear, and complicated motives beyond our conscious understanding. Nor did we even wish to comprehend ourselves, our unseemly and illicit desires, who we truly were. We fled from knowledge into fantasies and self-deceptions, subtly hallucinating our perceptions of others in response to our own archaic conflicts and experiences, and rearranging the universe to conform to our wishes for gods and afterlives. Freudian psychoanalysis is an acute subversion of subjectivity and knowledge. This course will thus examine Freud’s work as it pertains to epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and esthetics, incorporating readings in the philosophy of knowledge, religion, morality, violence, literature, and art.
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