PHL217: Introduction to Continental Philosophy: Index
A wide range of traditions fall under the heading of continental philosophy, and this course goes through them by way of one concept: recognition. What it takes for one person to be acknowledged by another as a person, what that acknowledgement is good for, and what goes wrong when it fails.
The claim that organizes the course is Hegel’s, that recognition is not a courtesy extended to a self already formed but the condition for being a self at all. Everything after him is a response: Marx relocating recognition into labour, Lukács arguing that under capitalism the relation stops looking like a relation, Sartre inverting its value so that being recognized becomes a threat rather than a good, then Beauvoir and Fanon on what happens to people recognized as less than persons.
Pages
One per thinker, each stating the central claim and what follows from it.
- Lukács, reification: how a relation between people takes on the character of a thing, and why the contemplative stance follows.
- Sartre, existence precedes essence and everything it forces: anguish and forlornness, facticity against transcendence, bad faith, and the Look.
- Recognition, the thread itself: each thinker’s position stated so they can be compared, and where they actually conflict.
Fichte, Hegel and Marx were taught before Paper 1 and do not have pages yet. Beauvoir is taught Aug 10 and Fanon Aug 12.
The readings
From the syllabus, in order:
| Date | Reading |
|---|---|
| Jul 8 | Fichte, Foundations of Natural Right, selections |
| Jul 13 | Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, “Lordship and Bondage” |
| Jul 15 | Marx, “Alienated Labour” |
| Jul 20 | In-class Paper 1 |
| Jul 22 | Lukács, “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” |
| Jul 27 | Sartre, Being and Nothingness, “Self-Negation” |
| Jul 29 | Sartre, Being and Nothingness, “The Encounter With the Other” |
| Aug 5 | In-class Paper 2 |
| Aug 10 | Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Introduction |
| Aug 12 | Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, ch. 7-8 |
Existentialism is a Humanism is listed as optional alongside the Jul 27 reading. Its arguments that carry into the assigned text are on the Sartre page.
What Paper 2 asks for
Wednesday Aug 5, in class, SS 2125, roughly 2 to 3 pages, no devices. It covers the three readings since Paper 1: Lukács, and the two Sartre chapters.
The structure, from the instructor’s description of the sample prompt:
- Two paragraphs of summary, one per thinker, giving relevant information about each in turn. Explicitly not as precise and narrow as Paper 1 had to be.
- One paragraph of exegesis on a passage not seen before, understandable from the readings, which “will set up a sort of debate between the thinkers.”
- At least one paragraph of argument on behalf of one of the two, with specific guidelines given for each option. One long paragraph can be enough.
He answers the parts one at a time, punctuating the response with the prompt’s own questions.
The unseen passage is what to prepare for. Memorized quotations help less than being able to read a passage cold, work out which disagreement it stands on, and say where the two thinkers part. The Recognition page sets out the four questions their disagreements actually turn on, and both thinker pages end with a method for reading an unfamiliar passage in that author’s style.
Index
- Lukács. Reification: how a relation between people takes on the character of a thing, why that only happens once the commodity becomes universal, what rationalized labour does to the worker, the contemplative stance, and the contradiction between rational parts and an irrational whole.
- Sartre. One claim and everything it forces: existence precedes essence, why that produces anguish and forlornness, facticity against transcendence, how bad faith exploits the gap between them, and what changes when another person looks at you.
- Recognition. The concept the course is built on, traced across thinkers: what Hegel establishes, how Marx and Lukács relocate it into labour and then bury it, how Sartre inverts it, and where the positions actually conflict.