Thinking the Present
Term:
Spring 2010
Subject Code:
GPHI
Course Number:
6103
How do we try to comprehend our
time in thought? How do we think the present through which we are so
precipitously passing? The aim of this lecture course is to show how theory can
bring us closer to understanding ‘where we are’. But it is also to pose the
question of how we need to think ‘on behalf of the present. Over the course of
fifteen lectures, we propose to approach such an understanding by identifying
seven key topics: (i) the state of the world since 1945; (ii) the problem of
nihilism; (iii) political theologies; (iv) violence and non-violence; (v)
ethics and responsibility; (vi) the nature of the human situation; (vii) the
political possibilities of the present. A deliberate heuristic of the course is
that these topics will be partially addressed through a contrast between
philosophical and ‘designerly’ ways of thinking the present, this contrast
being itself understood as part of ‘where we are’.
Each of these topics will be
addressed with a lecture by both teachers, followed by discussion. Many
thinkers will be discussed, both canonical thinkers like Rousseau, Nietzsche,
Schmitt, Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno and Levinas. But more importantly perhaps
we will focus on the work of contemporary thinkers like Agamben, Butler, Badiou, Zizek,
Vattimo, Gillian Rose, Zygmunt Bauman and John Gray.
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