Special Seminar on Selected Philosophical Issues

**Schedule: Oct 23, Oct 30, Nov. 6, Nov. 13

This is a ONE unit course consists of FOUR classes only, each class is 3 hours.

course outline: PDF

PHI 5180 Special Seminar on Selected Philosophical Issues:

The Life-World: Intersubjectivity and Ethics

Course Outline:

Edmund Husserl, whose 150th birthday we are marking this year, is the main source of inspiration for almost all so-called continental philosophy: Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and very many of the French structuralists, deconstructivists and postmodernists studied Husserl and learned from him. They all appreciated Husserl’s insights into the nature of the subject and subjectivity. However, only few of them paid attention to his very careful study of intersubjectivity, although Husserl already in his first major work, the Prolegomena to the Logical Investigations, argued that a subjectivist philosophy is untenable. Starting from subjectivity one has to work one’s way through intersubjectivity to objectivity.

The course will begin with a survey of Husserl’s philosophy as a whole, what motivated it and how it developed. We will then go on to study carefully Husserl’s view on subjectivity, intersubjectivity and objectivity. Husserl’s reflections on intersubjectivity form the foundation for his work on ethics, which will be the main topic of the later part of the course.

Reading Lists:

Edmund Husserl, Ideas, Part Two, Chapter 1 + Part Three, Chapter 3 (= §27-§32, approximately 12 pages + §87-§96, approximately 25 pages) Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations , Fifth Meditation + Conclusion (= §42-§64 of the book, approximately 67 pages)
Both volumes have been published in German and in English by Nijhoff (later taken over by Kluwer and now Springer). However, Husserl’s texts are written in a complicated language and if there are good Chinese translations of these two works it will probably be easier for the students to read these texts in Chinese.