Philosophy 100.11: Philosophy or Literature? The Literary Art of Philosophers
340 Uris Hall
Office: B47 McGraw Hall
Office Hours: TR, 1.45-2.45 pm (and by appointment)
Office Phone: (607) 255-5864
Email: cb277@cornell.eduRequired Texts:
· Augustine: Confessions (selections)
· René Descartes: The Discourse on Method
· Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
· David Hume: Dialogues concerning Natural Religion
· Berel Lang: The Anatomy of Philosophical Style (selections)
· Michel de Montaigne: Essays (selections)
· Friedrich Nietzsche: Ecce Homo
· Plato, Apology of Socrates, Phaedo
· Richard Rorty: Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (selections)
These books can be purchased at Cornell store.
Recommended Text:
· Joseph Williams: Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace
· Ann Raimes, Keys for Writers: A Brief Handbook
These books are on course reserve and you may use them at Olin Library.
Is there any special connection between the form of a philosophical text and its content? Is there any relationship between the literary forms philosophers make use of and the specific methods through which they develop their thinking? Between, say, Plato’s dialogical form and his dialectical method? What are the favorite literary and rhetorical devices/strategies philosophers employ when expressing their views? These are some of the questions addressed in this course. Texts by Plato, Augustine, Montaigne, Nietzsche and others will be discussed from the standpoint of their “literaryness.” In their essays, students will have to discuss these texts, and indirectly – in the very process of writing their essays – they will also have to demonstrate a certain instantiation of the relationship philosophy-literature.
Course Rationale:
The main objective of the course is to make you understand, as much in detail as possible, how philosophical texts are being built up rhetorically and stylistically, how they are being produced, and what are in general the guidelines governing the philosophical writing. In other words, you will be made aware of the process through which a certain philosophy is given shape. And it is exactly the study of this process that must play a crucial role in any attempt at understanding that philosophy.
In addition, as a result of constantly considering philosophical texts from the standpoint of their “literaryness,” we will have an opportunity to explore (or at least discuss in passing) some of the interesting interdisciplinary issues raised by the fact that philosophy overlaps with literature.
This course will:
· make you realize the extremely important role that language plays in the shaping and configuration of the philosophical discourse, and - by way of consequence - of any other form of intellectual discourse;
· help you develop and improve your own writing skills by becoming aware of the precise way in which some of the most important philosophical writings in the Western tradition have been given shape.
· make you realize how tricky and misleading language sometimes can be, and how to avoid being misled by sophisms, fallacies, etc.
I want to emphasize that, especially for non-philosophers, this course will play the role of a very accessible introduction to philosophy. By your being involved in the reading of these philosophical texts, you will increasingly become familiar with the philosophical problems themselves, and will get an idea about what philosophy ultimately is.
Course Requirements:
Six essays, three essay revisions
Short presentation (at least once)
Regular attendance and participation in class.
Two individual conferences
Please keep copies of all materials you write and submit for this course (including essays commented on, and returned to you, by the instructor). At the end of the term all these materials will be formally submitted as a portfolio. In addition to what you will have written during the term, the portfolio must also contain three revisions: you have to choose three (out of the six) essays written during the term, and revise them according to the instructor’s comments. Please note that you will be given a grade only after you submit the portfolio.
Guidelines for Submission of Written Work:
· MLA Citation Style
· Word-process all written work; handwritten papers will not be accepted;
· Use standard font, in 12 point; double-spaced.
· Number your pages;
· Staple your pages together;
· At the top of the first page include your name, assignment number, date, and essay title;
· Proofread and spell-check before bringing any papers to class.
Important: Start working on a given written assignment only after you have finished the reading assignment for the corresponding class. Each written assignment is closely related to, and presupposes, certain readings.
Policy on absences and lateness:
It is imperative that you attend every class. If for some reason you must miss a class, you are responsible for finding out from other students (not from the instructor!) what happened in your absence, getting copies of materials and assignments, discussing work covered in class, etc.
Grading Policy:
· 10% Regular attendance of seminar meetings. Please don’t be late!
· 10% Active participation in classroom discussions, which includes (but is not limited to) posing “good questions”; making informed comments and formulating original points of view, establishing a fruitful dialogue with the other students during the class, etc;
· 10% Oral presentation. Each student has to prepare at least one short presentation on an assigned topic (this is different from writing assignments)
· 20% Final 7-10 page essay (see below: Essay 6) on a course-related topic designed by the student in consultation with the instructor.
· 50% Satisfactory completion of all written assignments.
Please note that a grade will be given to you only at the end of the semester, after you submit the portfolio. During the term your work will be carefully supervised and commented on, but not formally graded.
As the semester progresses each of you must think of a topic for Essay 6. The topic for this final essay is designed by you, but must be course-related, and discussed with the instructor (on the occasion of a conferences or just make an appointment!).
Conferences:
In addition to the two required conference, all students taking this course are encouraged to make appointments with the instructor in order to discuss issues related to the course. The instructor may ask you to come in at other times for discussing particular issues. Please feel free to email the instructor whenever you need to discuss with him aspects of your work.
University Policies and Regulations:
The instructor of this course respects and upholds University policies and regulations pertaining to the observation of religious holidays; assistance available to the physically handicapped, visually and/or hearing impaired student; plagiarism; sexual harassment; and racial or ethnic discrimination. All students are advised to become familiar with the respective University regulations and are encouraged to bring any questions or concerns to the attention of the instructor.
Students with Disabilities:
In compliance with the Cornell University policy and equal access laws, I am available to discuss appropriate academic accommodations that may be required for students with disabilities. Requests for academic accommodations are to be made during the first three weeks of the semester, except in unusual circumstances, so that arrangements can be made. Students are encouraged to register with Student Disability Services to verify their eligibility for appropriate accommodations.
Academic Integrity:
Plagiarism, or academic theft, is passing off someone else’s work as your own. Regardless of your background, you are responsible for not plagiarizing. See the Sections in Cornell’s Policy Notebook on the “Code of Academic Integrity” and “Acknowledging the Work of Others.” Plagiarism will be prosecuted; it can affect your permanent record.
The Code of Academic Integrity is available on the web at http://www.cornell.edu/UniversityFaculty/docs/main.html
General Schedule of Events:
Week 1:
Tuesday (9/2)
o Introduction to the course.
o Informal in-class writing
o Discussion: Why is writing important to philosophers?
Ø Writing Assignment: Essay 1 (due 9/9):
Read carefully the following fragments:
“…philosophy, however it is otherwise conceived, is also, perhaps even first, a form of writing. …[T]he critical means that have been found relevant to more conventionally literary texts can be – ought to be – also applied to philosophical writing, up to the point at least that the writing itself demonstrates its relevance.” (Lang, p.2)
“…the commitment of the philosophical discourse is to truth …as distinct from the manner of representation…. In these terms, a proposal to read philosophy literarily is at best an irrelevance, at worst a distortion.” (Lang, p.2)
Roughly speaking, in today’s scholarship these are the two predominant views about the possible relationships between philosophy and literature.
Based on what you have read in Chapters 1 & 2 of Berel Lang’s book, write an essay (2-3 pages) in which you should:
1) Using your own words, identify what exactly each position claims.
2) Argue for one of these two views.
Thursday (9/4)
o Discussion: Philosophy and literature: A troubled relationship?
o Group work: How is it that good philosophers are sometimes bad writers?
o Reading: Lang (Chapters 1-2)
Week 2:
Tuesday (9/9) Essay 1 due today!
o Discussion: Socrates as a model
o Group work: What is philosophy? Way of life, rhetoric, literature, search for the truth? All of them?
o Reading: Plato (Apology)
Ø Writing Assignment: Essay 2 (Due 9/18):
Based on your reading of Plato’s Apology and Phaedo, write a 3/4 pages essay trying to answer the following question:
Why do you think Socrates did not write/publish anything during his lifetime?
In this essay you might consider addressing, among other things, one or more of the following issues: what is the utility of philosophy for life?; philosophy as a way of life vs. philosophy as an academic discipline; writing vs. speech; teaching philosophy vs. writing (about) philosophy; writing and memory; fame and immortality; facing death.
Use quotations from the two works in order to support your claims.
Thursday (9/11)
o Informal in-class writing
o Discussion: Are there ideas to die for? Expressing yourself / defending your views / dying for them
o Reading: Plato (Apology)
Week 3:
Tuesday (9/16)
o Discussion: Philosophy, Dialogue and Immortality.
o Group work: the problem of dialogue
o Reading: Plato (Phaedo)
Thursday (9/18) Essay 2 due today!!!
o Discussion: Socrates and the problem of writing philosophy: was he against philosophy as a text?
o Group work: conversation, dialogue, debate, persuasion
o Reading: Plato (Phaedo)
Ø Assignment: Essay 3 (draft due 9/25; final version due 10/2):
Based on what you have already read in Plato (Apology and Phaedo) and Augustine (especially Confessions, Book III), write a 4/5 essay trying to answer the following questions:
1) What do Plato and Augustine have in common as far as their views about the nature and role of philosophy are concerned?
2) Where do they disagree?
Where appropriate use quotations from the works named above in order to support your claims.
Week 4:
Tuesday (9/23)
o Discussion: Philosophy as prayer – prayer as literature.
o Group work: writing confessions – Why? To whom?
o Reading: Augustine (Confessions, Books I & III)
· Thursday (9/25) Essay 3 (draft) due today!!!
o Informal in-class writing
o Discussion: Writing about God / writing about yourself.
o Group work: saying/writing the unsayable
o Reading: Augustine (Confessions, Book X)
Week 5:
· Tuesday (9/30)
o Discussion: Philosophy at play (I).
o Group work: philosophical humor; humor as a rhetorical tool
o Reading: Erasmus (In Praise of Folly)
· Thursday (10/2) Essay 3 (final) due today!!!
o Informal in-class writing
o Discussion: Philosophy at play (II).
o Group work: the special charm of folly
o Reading: Erasmus (In Praise of Folly)
Week 6:
· Tuesday (10/7)
o Modern philosophy and the adventures of the self.
o Group work: how legitimate is to take yourself as the object of your philosophizing?
o Reading: Descartes (Discourse)
Ø Writing Assignment: Essay 4 (due 10/23):
Write an essay (4/5 pages) on the following topic: the philosopher’s “auctorial self” in Montaigne and Descartes as it this reveals itself in The Discourse on Method and the Essays.
In your essay you might address, among other things, such issues as: self and God; humility/pride; religious authority and the self; “know yourself”; self-discovery; self-knowledge; knowing yourself – writing yourself; the self and the narrative; solitude.
· Thursday (10/9)
o Informal in-class writing
o Discussion: The “first person” philosopher.
o Group work: I (self)narrate, therefore I exist
o Reading: Lang (Chap. 3)
Week 7:
· Tuesday (10/14) Fall Break!
· Thursday (10/16)
o Workshops on Essay 4; Proposals for Essay 6.
o Group work: Montaigne and the modern man
o Discussion: Philosophy as essay (I)
o Reading: Montaigne (Essays)
Week 8:
· Tuesday (10/21)
o Discussion: Philosophy as essay (II)
o Group work: making philosophy (more and more) accessible; Aristotle (or Kant, Heidegger, etc.) in 90 minutes?
o Reading: Montaigne (Essays)
· Thursday (10/23) Essay 4 due today!
o Informal in-class writing
o Discussion: The “literaryness” of the philosophical writing (I).
o Reading: Lang (Chap. 4-5)
Week 9:
· Tuesday 10/28)
o Discussion: The “literaryness” of the philosophical writing (II).
o Reading: Lang (Chap. 4-5)
o Workshops on essay 5
· Thursday (10/30)
o Informal in-class writing
o Group work:
Ø Assignment: Essay 5 (draft due 11/11; final version due 11/18):
Read carefully the following passage:
“Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a clear idea of what poets of strong ages have called inspiration? If not, I will describe it. – If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one’s system, one could hardly reject altogether the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely a medium of overpowering forces. The concept of revelation – in the sense that suddenly, with indescribable certainty and subtlety, something becomes visible, audible, something that shakes one to the last depths and throws one down – that merely describes the facts. One hears, one does not seek; one accepts, one does not ask who gives; like lightening, a thought flashes up, with necessity, without hesitation regarding its form – I never had any choice.
A rapture whose tremendous tension occasionally discharges itself in a flood of tears – now the pace quickens involuntarily, now it becomes slow; one is altogether beside oneself, with the distinct consciousness of subtle shudders and of one’s skin creeping down to one’s toes; a depth of happiness in which even what is most painful and gloomy does not seem something opposite but rather conditioned, provoked, a necessary color in such a superabundance of light; an instinct for rhythmic relationships that arches over wide spaces of forms – length, the need for a rhythm with wide arches, is almost the measure of the force of inspiration, a kind of compensation for its pressure and tension.
Everything happens involuntarily in the highest degree but as in a gale of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity. – The involuntariness of image and metaphor is strangest of all; one no longer has any notion of what is an image or a metaphor: everything offers itself as the nearest, most obvious, simplest expression. […]
This is my experience of inspiration; I do not doubt that one has to go back thousands of years in order to find anyone who could say to me, ‘it is mine as well.’” (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo)
With this passage in mind, and also in light of the other philosophical texts you have read for this course, write an essay (5/6 pages) on the following topic:
What might be inspiration and what cannot be inspiration in the process of writing philosophy?
In this essay you are expected to establish a set of connections between the notion of inspiration in Nietzsche, as described in the above passage, and inspiration-related issues you have come across in the texts discussed so far in this course. Make as many references as you can to these texts, quoting from them where appropriately.
You might consider touching, among other things, on such issues as: inspiration vs. elaboration; the relationship inspiration-discovery; the relationship inspiration-revelation; “auctorial self”; Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy as (a form of) poetry; the problem of the unconscious; philosopher as a prophet; Nietzsche’s aestheticism, etc.
Week 10:
· Tuesday (11/4)
o Discussion: The free-thinking and the art of dialogue
o Reading: Hume (Dialogues concerning Natural Religion)
· Thursday (11/6)
o Discussion: Fleshing it out: imagining philosophical disputes
o Group work: the ethics of debate, understanding properly the opponent’s position, etc.
o Reading: Hume (Dialogues concerning Natural Religion)
Week 11:
· Tuesday (11/11) Essay 5 (draft) due today!!!
o Discussion: writing and inspiration
o Reading: Nietzsche (Ecce Homo)
o Informal in-class writing
· Thursday (11/13)
o Group work: understanding and misunderstanding Nietzsche
o Reading: Nietzsche (Ecce Homo)
Week 12:
· Tuesday (11/18) Essay 5 (final version) due today!
o Informal in-class writing
o Discussion: Philosophy as Irony (I)
o Reading: Rorty (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Chapter 4)
Ø Writing Assignment: Essay 6 (draft due 11/20; final version due 12/4)
This essay (7/10 pages) is on a topic designed by the student in consultation with the instructor. By this time (11/20) each student must have already proposed a topic (one sentence), discussed it with the instructor and started working on the first draft.
· Thursday (11/20) Essay 6 (draft) due today!!!
o Discussion: Philosophy as irony
o Group work: what is ultimately philosophy about?
o Reading: Rorty (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Chapters 5 &6)
Week 13:
· Tuesday (11/25)
o Discussion: Philosophers and writers
o Group work: what kind of writer is the philosopher?
o Reading: Rorty (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Chapters 7 & 8)
· Thursday (11/27) Thanksgiving Break!
Week 14:
· Tuesday (12/2)
o Discussion: The “Rorty scandal”
o Group work: politics in academia; challenging the established opinions.
o Reading: Lang (Chapter 6)
· Thursday (12/4) Essay 6 due today!
o Informal in-class writing
o Overview
o Farewell
Exam Period Dec. 11-19
Submission of portfolios or of a revised paper or a conference.