English 188A-1 - Spring, 2012

Topics in Literary and Critical Theory

Topic: Modern Theories of the Subject: Descartes, Hume, Kant

Class Information

Instructor: Brown, Nathan
CRN: 93525
Time: TR 10:30-11:50
Location: 308 Voorhies

Description

REVISED TOPIC -- MODERN THEORIES OF THE SUBJECT: DESCARTES, HUME, SPINOZA, KANT

"The subject" is an important conceptual figure in modern philosophy and contemporary theory, central to debates concerning agency, embodiment, knowledge, and political determination. The conceptual difficulty of grasping this figure is that, depending upon the context and the theoretical framework at issue, to be "a subject" is to be either active or passive, determining or determined, productive or receptive, incorporeal or embodied, thinking or feeling, a rational being or a habit-form. The field of these antinomies and of efforts at their resolution structure a site of conceptual elaboration within which different traditions of modern thought -- rationalism and empiricism, materialism and idealism -- collide or intersect.

We will study four major theories of the subject in four of the key texts of philosophical modernity: René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, and Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics.

The course thus offers an opportunity to acquire basic knowledge of foundational texts and to explore problems of perennial philosophical and theoretical interest, including reason, habit, affect, freedom, causality, necessity, and contingency.

Grading

Attendance and Participation: 10%
Seminar Presentations: 10%
Discussion Posts: 10%
Term Paper: 50%
Final Exam: 20%

Texts

Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume
Ethics, Baruch Spinoza
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Immanuel Kant