course handout 2011-12

7/28/2019 Course Handout 2011-12

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Stan

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on

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ShouldersofGiants

Foundation

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in

the

Arts

SA

HC

10002

French Troops confront Algerian Terrorists/Freedom

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Sta

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houldersofGiants

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Contact details...................................................................................................4Groups and Timetables.........................................................................................5

Lecture & Seminar Schedule..............................................................................6Course Assessment...............................................................................................6

How the Seminar/Portfolio System Works: Important!.......................................7Submitting Weekly Reading: Rules and Guidelines...........................................8Essay Questions ................................................................................................9Resits...............................................................................................................10

Ten Habits of First Class Students...................................................................10General reading..................................................................................................1112. No lecture essay and portfolio deadlines...................................................25

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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Foundations ofStudy in the Arts

SAHC10002

Contact details

Course Director: Dr Leif JerramEmail: [email protected]: W.2.07, Samuel Alexander BuildingOffice hours: Tues and Thurs, 11-12

The CourseThis course introduces you to the key ideas, concepts and thinkerswhich underpin the ways we approach the world in the differentdisciplines in the arts, from archaeology to literature, history to film, artto drama, religion to music. You will have heard of Jesus, Marx andFreud, but may be less familiar with Wollstonecrafts arguments aboutgender, or Fanons writing on ethnicity. Each week, you will explore acentral theme in a lecture, a seminar, and your written submissions,and engage directly with the texts or images at the heart of the debate from Platos Republic, through Giottos frescos, to Emmanuel Kantsdiscussion of reason. By doing so, you will gain a broad foundation inthe ideas and concepts you will use throughout your degreeprogramme in the School.

Aims1. To provide a common introduction to some of the central issues

and ideas found in the programmes within the School.2. To help students develop an awareness of how different thinkers,

concepts and terms underpin scholarship in the programmes withinthe School.

3. To encourage students to develop critical skills by analysing avariety of key texts.

Learning Outcomes At the end of the course students will normally:

1. Have acquired preliminary knowledge of how some key conceptsare used in different cultural and historical contexts.

2. Have developed an understanding of the importance of a range ofcritical thinkers.

3. Demonstrated some knowledge of the critical methods which linkmany of the disciplines within the School.

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Groups and Timetables

If you do not know which seminar group you are in, look on your blackboardpages for times. If it is not there, please see the undergraduate office of theSchool of Arts as soon as possible. This office is located in A6, Samuel AlexanderBuilding. Similarly, if you find you need to change groups because of a timetableclash, see the office staff or change your seminar groups online. If you do notattend the correct group, you will be marked as absent. If you do notconfirm group changes with the office, you will be marked absent.Tutors and lecturers cannot change your group allocation.Please contact your seminar leader with queries, or check the course pack.

Lecture

wks 1-3,

5, 7-12

Thursday 1pm-2pm Stopford Theatre 6

Lecture

wks 4 & 6

Thursday 1pm-2pm Stopford Theatre 3

Seminar1 Monday 09.00 - 10.00 Williamson 4.04 KatherineFennelly

Seminar2 Monday 10.00 11.00 Williamson 4.04 KatherineFennelly

Seminar3 Monday 09.00 - 10.00 Dover Street B.S.7 Ravi Hensman

Seminar4 Monday 10.00 11.00 Dover Street B.S.7 Ravi Hensman

Seminar5 Tuesday 14.00 15.00 Uni Place 4.207 Victoria Glass

Seminar6 Tuesday 15.00 16.00 Uni Place 4.207 Victoria Glass

Seminar7 Tuesday 14.00 15.00 Sam Alex S1.10 Katan AlderSeminar8 Tuesday 15.00 16.00 Sam Alex S1.10 Katan Alder

Seminar9 Wednesday 10.00 - 11.00 Dover Street B.S.7 Carina Spaulding

Seminar10 Wednesday 11.00 12.00 Dover Street B.S.7 Carina Spaulding

Seminar11 Wednesday 10.00 - 11.00 Simon 2 (2.39) Luke Kelly

Seminar12 Wednesday 11.00 12.00 Simon 2 (2.39) Luke Kelly

Seminar13 Friday 11.00 12.00 Uni Place 5.206 Ellen McInnes

Seminar14 Friday 12.00 13.00 Uni Place 5.206 Ellen McInnes

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Lecture & Seminar Schedule

1. Introduction: Why these giants?2. Theme: Truth and Reality.

Text: Platos Republic, Allegory of the Cave.3. Theme: Disputing Truth, Rational Faith

Text: Aquinas.4. Theme: Faith, Progress and Reason.

Key text: Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?5. Theme: Grace, Salvation and the English Language.

Text: The Gospel According to St. Matthew, King James Version.6. Theme: Men and Women.

Key text: Extracts from Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman.7. Theme: Society and the Human Will

Key text: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto.8. Theme: Consciousness and Unconsciousness

Key text: Extracts from Freud.9. Theme: Culture and Society

Key text: Extracts from Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. I10.Theme: Coloniality and Post-Coloniality

Key text: Extracts from Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.11.Concluding lecture: How to Write the Essay

Course Assessment

One assessed essay of c. 2,500 words (50% in total). Submission date:Thursday 10 May, 2012 by 12.00 p.m. THIS IS MIDDAY. Worksubmitted late will receive zero.

One portfolio of your marked seminar preparation work, consisting of 9marked pieces of reflection on the reading and themes to be discussed inyour small groups (50% in total). Un-marked pieces may not be included.If you fraudulently include pieces which should not be there, this will betreated as academic malpractice, and reported accordingly to the

universitys disciplinary panel.Thursday 10 May, 2012 by 12.00 p.m.THIS IS MIDDAY. Work submitted late will receive zero.

You will submit this work online via Blackboard. You will receive furtherinstructions on how to do this closer to the time, so make sure that you checkyour emails.

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How the Seminar/Portfolio System Works: Important!

Each week, you will have one lecture and one seminar. The subjects for thelectures are in this booklet. Your seminars will follow the themes of the lectures

closely. Altogether, you will cover nine substantive topics over the course of thesemester. Every week, you need to read:

1. the central text (i.e., the text by the author were studying)2. AND some demanding secondary reading on the topic for the up-coming

seminar, listed under case study.3. AND some of the background reading which is general/introductory in

nature, listed as background.

This is quite demanding, but it a) means that you wont have a sudden rush ofreading to do for your essay, because youll have done a lot of it already, and b)

means youll get an intellectual rush as you go on quite an exciting journey.

Each week, you must submit a reflection on your reading (the central text andthe demanding secondary reading) to your tutor, by 5pm on the day before yourseminar. This reading must not address a general background text theseare things we assume youre doing anyway. Because there is no exam for thiscourse, it is assumed according to university regulations, that youll be doingabout 15 hours a week work on this course. If you feel you cant do this, thenyou can change off the course in the first week.

Most students say that this is the best course that theyve done at university

they all say that its the hardest. So if youre at university for an easy ride, andyoure not that curious about ideas, and you dont like doing work, then thisprobably isnt the course for you. You wont be judged for changing off it inweek one!

Your weekly reflection should address the following rubric:

What did you identify as being most interesting, controversial, helpful,relevant or confusing in your reading of central text and the challengingsecondary literature, in the light of the issues highlighted in lectures, andfor next weeks seminar in the coursebook? Why?

Do not summarize the content of the work, but try to highlight theways your reading tackled, avoided, challenged or agreed with:

a) the issues highlighted in the lecture summary in the course booklet;b) the issues highlighted/ideas presented in the lecture;c) the issues highlighted for discussion by your seminar leader or the

coursebook for that seminar.d) The issues highlighted in the general reading for that seminar.

In particular, try to explore the authors argument about the big

theoretical/philosophical issues for that week, and give a sense of your ownview on how the evidence and argument fit together.

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You dont have to address every single issue just pick one or two big ones. Butyou do need to identify whatyou perceived to be most important, and theissue(s) which your reading most closely tackles and engages with. You canafford to be quite personal, but dont just retreat to I think Plato was right

because. Also, try not to critique academics for being boring or repetitiveor pretentious. They are often all these things, but they dont take kindly tobeing told, and it rather implies that you havent bothered to find the importantpart of their writing.

Submitting Weekly Reading: Rules and Guidelines

1. Length: It must be 250-300 words long, and must be sent as an emailattachment in Microsoft Word no other format is acceptable.

2. File format: It must be saved as Firstname Surname Week 2.doc Week

3.doc etc. So if I were submitting the work, the filename would be LeifJerram Week 4.doc etc. Make sure it is not saved as .docx.3. Presentation rules: It must be formatted according to the rules in the How

to Research and Write guide on the course blackboard page, and fullyreferenced, with a full bibliographic reference, as per the instructions in Howto Research and Write. Pay attention to this its very frustrating having yourwork corrected for these issues over and over, but these issues will behammered home.

4. Deadline: It must arrive in the tutors inbox before 5pm of the day beforethe seminar. Submitting the work is a condition of attendance at theseminar; attending the seminar is a condition of getting the work

marked.5. Topic: It must address one of the pieces in the case study section of the

weekly reading.6. Marks: If you do not attend the seminar, the work will not be

marked, and you will not be able to include it in your portfolio. If youare kept away from the university for a good reason (illness leading tohospitalisation, death of a close relative etc.) then you can apply for specialcircumstances.You need to attend the seminar for the work to count,as the work is designed to support the seminar, and enable discussion there.

7. Severe illness/personal disruption: You are allowed to miss one piece ofwork over the semester out of the 9, but only because of a severe illness or amajor personal crisis (the death of a close relative, for example). You do notneed to provide evidence for this, but it is assumed that you will be able toprovide evidence for it. For every piece of work less than 8, however, you willlose 1/8th of the mark.

8. Extensions/Excuses. You cant have any/they dont exist. If a major illnessor life trauma (like breaking a leg or the death of a parent) disrupt yourstudies, then you can apply for any lost marks to be replaced according toSchool of Arts procedure (the rules are in your departments studenthandbook). But this does not cover things like colds, being a bit upset, havinga lot of work on, etc. If you miss several pieces of work, you must

present special circumstances evidence for ALL of your absences.

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Portfolio and Marking1. Each week, your seminar leader will comment on these pieces, and return

them to you by email. Save them and print them out. MAKE SURE YOUKEEP THESE RESPONSES! They should be kept safe, as they cannot bereplaced, and make up 40% of your mark. If you lose them, you will receive

Zero. This happens to at least one person a year. Dont let it be you.2. The mark is for improvement over time, not attainment each week.

These marked responses will constitute your portfolio, and the improvementyou make over the semester in the quality of your analysis and writing will be

judged by these weekly pieces of work. Every year, a couple of people try toplay the system and do rubbish work at the beginning and magically improveat the end. Every year, it fails. Concise analysis of complex arguments is notsomething whichyou can already do, but which everyone else needs to workat. It only comes with practice.

3. Finality of deadlines. Only work which is submitted on time, and only workwhich bears your seminar leaders comments, can be included in theportfolio. You may miss one piece of work due to severe illness. You will lose1/8th of your portfolio marks for each piece below 8. If there is a seriousreason why there are gaps (protracted hospitalisation, death of a parent,sibling or child etc.), then you may submit a Special Circumstances form withthe portfolio, along with your formal evidence (letter from a consultant etc.).Neither your tutors, nor the lecturers, nor the course director can make anyallowances or give any extensions, so please do not ask. It is anunbreakable university regulation. Do not put me or your tutors in a difficultsituation.

The mark you get for the portfolio will reflect your responsiveness to your tutorscomments over the term, not a magic hurdle which you can either jump or not. If youchange, your mark will improve. If you dont, it will decline.

Each piece of seminar work and the final essay must be correctly laidout, and have proper bibliographic references at the end of it, andproper footnoting throughout, according to the rules given on pages10-12.

Essay Questions

Students should answer with reference to at least two of the weekly themesencountered during the course. The precise nature of what you plan to analyse,how and why should be explained in the introduction of the essay.

Make sure that you show your seminar leader a formal, well-researchedbibliography and plan before you embark on the essay, and make sure that theessay focuses at least 80% on the issues covered in the course.

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Make sure you have mastered the instructions on how to write anessay in How to Research and Write. Dont throw easy marks awayhere!

1. Can we rely on the evidence of our senses?

2. What impresses you more: the capacity of culture to liberate, or to maskoppression?

3. Does an individual control their own destiny?4. What are the most significant insurmountable problems with reason as a

way of understanding the world?5. To what extent do the thinkers weve studied concur that the human mind

is rational?6. What is truth?7. Do any of the approaches you have encountered give real voice to the

oppressed or the marginal, or do they just fte oppression andmarginality?

8. Can we ever take anything that anyone says or writes at face value?

Resits

In the unlikely event that you fail the course, you will be required to submit twoessays on different topics from the one you have already tried (the other essayreplaces the portfolio). Pick two alternative questions, and write an essay of2,500 words on each for the August re-assessment deadline. Make sure youspecify at the top of your resit essay the question you originally attempted.

Ten Habits of First Class Students

Over the years, there are things Ive noticed that some students do, that otherstudents dont. This is completely unscientific. The students that do these thingstend to see their marks on an upward trajectory. Do most of these, and yourgrades will improve. The rest will fit into place if you do.

1. Show up. The world belongs to those that turn up.2. Read a newspaper. That means The Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the

Independentor the Financial Times. Paper versions only count. If its free, and not worthleaving your room for, it isnt really worth having. The news actually starts on page 4.Otherwise you will always appear ignorant or isolated to credible intellectuals.

3. Do stuff that isnt academic. Write for a newspaper, campaign for a political party,mentor children, run club nights, act in a play, join the hockey club. This gets you goodjobs too whether you want to save the world from poverty, or become the mostgrasping hedge fund manager, a degree alone is not enough to succeed.

4. Read work out loud. Very, very slowly. More slowly than Huw Edwards, notoriouslyslow BBC news presenter. The reallysuccessful ones get their friends to read it out loudvery slowly to them. It shows more than anything else where youre writing junk English,boring your reader, waffling or talking nonsense. S l o w l y so slowly it hurts.

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5. Look at the edges. Most people are so focused on the text, they ignore diversions liketables of contents, footnotes and bibliographies. Want to look like an adventurousgenius to your lecturer? Follow the diversions they offer.

6. Go to office hours. With essay plans, questions, goals, queries, ponderings etc. Thesecould be office hours of your personal tutors, or others in your own subject area that you

have got on with. Dont pester with emails if its important enough, just turn up for aquick chat.

7. Read without taking notes. Just jot down at the end of each chapter what wasimportant or interesting about what youve just read. Youll remember it better that way,despite what you might think. If you didnt remember it at the end of the chapter, it reallyprobably wasnt that important. Reading to understandcannot be done at the same timeas writing. Anyhow, youre not expected to know everything.

8. Move beyond Oxford Road. There is more to Manchester than the 100 yds either sideof Oxford Road. Life in the student bubble is pretty restricting.

9. Read random stuff. Ever wondered what its like to be black, gay, a soldier, Afghan, inlove? Read novels. Ever wondered what a black hole is? Why banks collapse? Read

popular factual books. Itll help you find out. Can you explain why theres a bankliquidity crisis? Can you be a credible intellectual if you cant?

10.Cant think of a tenth

General readingThe following are particularly recommended. There are multiple copies of allthese books in the library. You do not need to buy any of them.

Magee, Bryan, The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy(London, 1987).

Russell, Bertrand. The History of Western Philosophy. Any edition.Jostein Gaarder, Sophies World (London, 1995). 1p on Amazon. Its a novel, so

introduces you to all this stuff painlessly You may not reference this inyour writing, though!

Stamford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html -good online summaries of many of the thinkers were studying, by leadingscholars in the field.

Very Short Introductions

Important: Some of these books were previously published in the pastmasters series, and so you might find them with similar names, butdifferent editions.

Julia Annas Plato: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003)Beth, Williamson, Christian Art. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford,

2004)Kerr,Aquinas: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2009)

John Riches, The Bible: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000).Marshall, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2009)

Roger Scruton, Kant: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001)Margaret Walters, Feminism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005)

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Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000)Anthony Storr, Freud: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001)Gary Gutting, Foucault: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005)Robert Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford,2003).

2. Theme: Truth and Reality.Text: Platos Republic, Allegory of the Cave.

Specifiedtext/image

Plato, The Republic (London, 1987). The metaphor of the sun(507b509c) and the analogy of the divided line (509d513e) at the end of Book 6. The allegory of the cave at thebeginning of Book 7 (514a520a).

Key issues

for thelecture

The lecture will treat the various contexts within which the texts

above have to be viewed:a) a brief overview of Platos lifeb) the political situation in Athens at the timec) The Republic as the text from which the above have beentaken and its governing question What is Justice.

Then we will examine more closely Platos theory of the forms asit is developed in the three illustrations, paying attention to theirorder. From this questions will arise concerning the nature of theGood, the True and the Just. Finally, attention will be drawn tothe ambiguities of the illustrations that open up a more criticalstance to Platos position.

Backgroundbooks/articles

Julia Annas, Plato: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003)Julia Annas, Introduction to Platos Republic (Oxford, 1981)

chapter 10Richard Kraut (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Plato

(Cambridge, 1993), introduction. Electronic book.GR Ferrari, The Cambridge Companion to Platos Republic

(Cambridge, 2003), chs. 1, 2, 11, 12. . Electronic book.Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/

Detailedanalyticaltexts

Julia Annas, Introduction to Platos Republic (Oxford, 1981)chapters 8 and 9 9 copies available in High DemandRichard Kraut, Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge, 1992)

- chapter 9 Platos Metaphysical Epistemology by NicholasP. White (CUP)

Jennifer Gurley, Platonic Paideia, Philosophy and Literature, 2(1999), 351-377.

Questions,themes ortopicsfordiscussion

in seminar

What were the big ideas that the thinker raised thatseemed really important or challenging?

How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What reallymattered to them about this weeks thinker?

1) What bothers Plato about the ways that people claim tounderstand the world? Gather information about it? Process

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that information?2) What do you think Plato means by the Good beyond Being

in the metaphor of the sun?3) What is the relationship between the visible and the

invisible worlds in the analogy of the line?

4) Does the allegory of the cave gather up the analyses of thesun metaphor and the line analogy and re-present them, oris the allegory doing something else entirely?

5) Would the philosopher make the best king?6) Can we detect reality in the world? Echoes of reality? No

reality?

3. Theme: Disputes, Reason, Faith and Methods.Text: Aquinas

Specifiedtext/image

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, prima pars, q. 1 a. 1-2 andq. 2 a. 1-3, taken from God and Creation. St. Thomas Aquinas,trans. and with an introduction by William P. Baumgarth andRichard J. Regan (Scranton, NJ, 1994), pp. 35-44. [.pdf]

Key issuesfor thelecture

Around the turn of the twelfth century, new institutions of highereducation began to appear. Contemporaries called themuniversities. They taught the liberal arts, canon and civil law,and theology. A new, analytical method of formulating argumentswas developed, replicating the dialectic of the lecture-hall debateat the schools. We call this scholasticism, and this marks theorigins of how we produce knowledge they called it,

disputation.

These university academics sought to understand thefoundations of their Christian faith by approaching it using thescholastic methodology. This involved a great process ofreconciliation: the attempt to reconcile theology with philosophy;the two great sources of authority with one another the Bible(and the Christian tradition of theology) with the newly-rediscovered Aristotle (and the ancient Greek tradition of naturalphilosophy); and ultimately, faith with reason.

The Parisian academic Thomas Aquinas produced the mostremarkable and influential attempt to understand the Christianfaith systematically through the application of natural reason todo theology philosophically in his great textbook, the Summatheologiae. He begins with the two most fundamental questions.First: is faith necessary, or natural reason sufficient? Second,does God exist? More to the point: can we prove that by reasonalone?

Backgroun

dbooks/artic

Colish, Marcia L., Medieval Foundations of the Western

Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400 (New Haven, CT, andLondon, 1997), pp. 265-301. [.pdf]

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les Haren, Michael, Medieval Thought. The Western IntellectualTradition from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century(Basingstoke and London, 21992), ch. 6 (AristotelianPhilosophy and Christian Theology System Building andControversy), pp. 161-206. [.pdf]

McGrade, A. S., ed., The Cambridge Companion to MedievalPhilosophy(Cambridge, 2003). [e-book]ch. 1: Steven P. Marrone, Medieval Philosophy in Context.ch. 6: Stephen P. Menn, Metaphysics. God and Being.

Kretzmann, Norman, and Eleonore Stump, eds., The CambridgeCompanion to Aquinas (Cambridge, 1993). [e-book]ch. 1: Jan A. Aertsen, Aquinas Philosophy in its HistoricalSetting.ch. 2: Joseph Owens, Aristotle and Aquinas.ch. 9: Mark D. Jordan, Theology and Philosophy.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/,http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas-moral-political/


Davies, Brian, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford, 1992),ch. 2 (Getting to God), pp. 21-39. [.pdf]Owens, Joseph, Aquinas and the Five Ways, in John R. Catan,

ed., St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God. CollectedPapers of Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R (Albany, NY, 1980), pp.132-41. [.pdf]

Sillem, Edward, Ways of Thinking about God. Thomas Aquinasand some Recent Problems (London, 1961), ch. 6 (Further

Considerations on the Theological Setting of the FiveWays), pp. 79-109. [.pdf]

Velde, Rudi te,Aquinas on God. The Divine Science of theSumma Theologiae (Aldershot, 2006), ch. 2 (The First

Thing to Know: Does God Exist? On the Five Ways), pp. 37-63. [.pdf]

Velde, R. A. te, The First Thing to Know about God: Kretzmannand Aquinas on the Meaning and Necessity of Argumentsfor the Existence of God, Religious Studies 39 (2003), 251-67. [e-journal]

Questions,themes ortopicsfordiscussionin seminar



1. What methods does Aquinas use to get to knowledge? Howfamiliar do they seem to you?

2. What role does Aquinas accord to faith? What is it for? Whatdoes it do?

3. Why does Aquinas think that faith is necessary, and that it isnot possible ultimately to know everything by natural reasonalone?

4. What is the argumentative basis for Aquinas five proofs ofthe existence of God (the quinque viae, or Five Ways)?

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5. Why does Aquinas consider it important to prove theexistence of God by reason? Why does reason matter? Whydoes he bother with it?

6. Are faith and reason mutually exclusive?

4. Theme: Faith, Progress and Reason.Key text: Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?.

Specifiedtext/image

Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What isEnlightenment, 1784 in Hyland et al (eds), TheEnlightenment: A Sourcebook and Reader(London, 2003),53-58.


The aim of this lecture is to read one of Kants most famouspopular essays and to engage with the ethical principles of theEnlightenment period. In the lecture a brief overview of Kantsphilosophy in its historical context will be given and different

types of Enlightenment (Scottish, French etc.) will be introduced.We will explore how Kant challenged humanity to define whatknowledge was, and what it was for.


Michael Losonsky, Enlightenment and Action from Descartes toKant(Cambridge, 2001): Ch. 1 The Enlightened Mind electronic resource.

Roger Scruton, Kant: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001)The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy

(Cambridge, 1992) electronic book; introduction, pluschapters 2, 5, 11, 18

Robert Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Riseand Fall of the Self(Oxford, 1988). Chapter on Kant/Enlightenment.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy,http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/Detailedanalyticaltexts

Michael Clarke, Kants Rhetoric of Enlightenment, Review ofPolitics 1 (1997), 53-73.Arthur Strum, What Enlightenment Is, New German Critique 79

(2000), 106-136.James Schmidt, The Question of Enlightenment: Kant,

Mendelssohn and the Mittwochsgesellschaft,Journal of theHistory of Ideas 2 (1989), 269-291.-- What Enlightenment Project?, Political Theory6 (2000),734-757.

Chad Wellmon, Kant and the Feelings of Reason, EighteenthCentury Studies 4 (2009), 557-580.




1. What is Enlightenment? Are there any problems with theway Kant defined it? Used it?

2. Is Enlightenment just another way of saying free speech?

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Reason? Evidence? Or is it something more than that?3. How does the Enlightenment transform the status/prestige

of the unique individual? And how does it limitwhat theindividual can do/say?

4. What is the difference between private and public use of

reason?5. Why does Kant think that we want to remain immature?6. Should there be restrictions to free speech? What can

restrain the Enlightened individual from immoral acts?7. Does Enlightenment mean getting rid of society?

Morality? Tradition?

5. Theme: Grace, Salvation and the English Language.Text: The Gospel According to St. Matthew, King James Version.

Specifiedtext/image

The Gospel according to St Matthew, KJV, Chapters 5-8, thenchapters 10: 16-41, 13, 18.


Jesus was one of the most radical social and political thinkersever to be discussed in Europe, and His ideas have shaped everyaspect of European culture right up to the present. In particular,it is sometimes difficult for contemporary readers to grasp Jesussurprising radicalism, so closely (and wrongly) do we equatereligion with conservatism. Yet Jesus ideas, here expressed inHis Sermon on the Mount and some other sermons, challengeevery preconception we might have about Him.

When his ideas were translated into peoples everyday languagesin the 15th and 16th centuries, this coincided with a change inmedia technology (the introduction of printing), and togetherthey destabilised the whole of European culture and politics, andtransformed the ways people thought about institutions, money,the state, God and above all, themselves. Vernacular Bibles,transmitted through printing, led people to claim they had adirect and personal relationship to God revealed throughscripture. Europe was plunged into a century of war and culturalcrisis and the idea of the unique individual human with special

rights and privileges was born.Backgroundbooks/articles

John Riches, The Bible: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000).Marshall, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford,

2009)Jaroslav Pelikan, The Reformation of the Bible/The Bible of the

Reformation (London, 1996)McGrath, Alistair. Reformation Thought: An Introduction (3rd Edn.,

Oxford, 1999) Chapters 1, 6, 8, 14 electronic bookDavid Bagchi et al The Cambridge Companion to Reformation

Theology(Cambridge, 2004), esp. Introduction, ch. 12, ch13, ch 15 electronic book

Detailedanalytical

David Weil Baker, The Historical Faith of William Tyndale: Non-Salvific Reading of Scripture at the Outset of the English

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texts Reformation, Renaissance Quarterly3 (2009), 661-692.Andrew Pettegree, Matthew Hall, The Reformation and the Book:

A reconsideration, The Historical Journal 4 (2004), 785-808.

Alexandra Walsham, Unclasping the Book? Post-Reformation

English Catholicism and the Vernacular Bible, The Journalof British Studies 2 (2003), 141-166.

Timothy Rosendale, Fiery Tongues? Language, Liturgy and theParadox of the English Reformation, RenaissanceQuarterly1 (2001), 1142-1164.

David Ginsburg, Ploughboys versus Prelates: Tyndale and Moreand the Politics of Bible Translation, Sixteenth CenturyJournal 1 (1988), 45-61.



How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What reallymattered to them about this weeks thinker?1.How surprised are you at what youve read here? What is this

Jesus like? Whether you believe in Him or not, how would youcharacterise the impact of what Hes saying?

2.What is the significance of the Bible being translated intovernacular? Why is it important to be able to understand itoneself? Is this the case in all religions? What effects does ithave on religious institutions?

3.What are Jesus theories of salvation? Are they coherent?4.What is the significance of parable teaching? By teaching in

metaphors and stories, rather than rules straight from God,what role does Jesus give to the listener in finding truth?

5.What are the key elements of Jesus view of religion asexpounded in the Sermon on the Mount, and the otherteachings you have read? Do you detect revolutionary potentialin them?

6.How does Jesus understand the individual in these texts? Whatqualities does s/he have? What responsibilities does s/he have,and to whom?

7. How did people use Jesus ideas when they got hold of them intheir own language? How did they change peoples ideas ofthemselves, and of authority?

6. Theme: Men and Women.Key text: Extracts from Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Specifiedtext/image

Mary Wollstonecraft, excerpts fromA Vindication of the Rights ofWomen (1792); from The Broadview Anthology of BritishLiterature, vol. 4: The Age of Romanticism, ed. Joseph Blacket al. (Broadview Press, 2006), pp. 70-90.

Key issues

for thelecture

Published in 1794 in response to the recent French Revolution

and its avowed aims of political liberty and equal human and civilrights for every person, Mary Wollstonecrafts Vindication of the

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Rights of Women called for a Revolution in female manners andthe abolition of all forms of discrimination or unequal treatmenton the basis of sex.

Beyond her insistence on the political rights of women to vote, to

own property, and to work in all the traditionally male-dominatedprofessions (including law, politics, medicine, education, andbusiness), Wollstonecraft challenged prevailing characterisationsof women as innately irrational, emotional, submissive,superficial and weak.

Instead, she argued that such traits were inculcated in women bya system of education that denied their rationality and inducedthem to think of themselves as subordinate to men, whom it wastheir duty to please and obey. Wollstonecraft was thus amongthe first social critics and thinkers to describe what we would nowcall genderas a social construct: that is, as a product of socialtraining and ideology rather than the product of innate naturaldifferences between males and females.


Claudia L. Johnson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to MaryWollstonecraft(Cambridge, 2002), esp. Introduction,Chapter 3 (Mary Wollstonecraft and Education, Chapter 4(Mary Wollstonecrafts Vindications and their politicaltradition, by Chris Jones), Chapter 9 (MaryWollstonecraftsA Vindication of the Rights of Woman andthe women writers of her day, by Anne K. Mellor), Chap 14

(Reception and Legacies) Electronic bookMargaret Walters, Feminism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford,

2005)Ferguson, Moira, and Janet Todd, Mary Wollstonecraft(Twayne,

1984)Stamford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy,

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wollstonecraft/Detailedanalyticaltexts

Catriona McKenzie, Reason and Sensibility: The Idea of WomensSelf-Governance in the Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft,Hypatia 4 (1993), 35-55.

Eileen Hunt, The Family as Cave, Platoon and Prison: The Three

Stages of Wollstonecraft's Philosophy of the Family,Review of Politics 1 (2002), 81-119.

Mary Poovey, Mans Discourse, Womans Heart: MaryWollstonecrafts Two Vindications, from The Proper Ladyand the Woman Writer, chapter 2 (Chicago, 1984), pp. 48-81.

Susan Ferguson, The Radical Ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft,Canadian Review of Political Science 3 (1999), 427-450.

Questions,themes or

topicsfordiscussion



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in seminar 1. From your reading of MW, is one born a woman, or does onebecome a woman? Is it a question of sex (fixed) or gender(constructed)?

2. What does Wollstonecraft contend should be the aims ofeducation? What are the consequences of the educational

system in place in Wollstonecrafts day, as she describes it?Are any elements of this system still evident today?

3. Are there any negative effects of the educational system formen, according to Wollstonecraft?

4. How does Wollstonecraft respond to Rousseaus argumentthat male superiority is derived from nature?

5. What, according to Wollstonecraft, should be the role ofromantic and/or sexual love in the lives of women (and men)?

6. What are the implications of Wollstonecrafts argument interms of social class?

7. Theme: Society and the Human WillKey text: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto.

Specifiedtext/image

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto withRelated Documents, ed. by John Toews (New York, 1999),pp. 65-83.


This lecture explores the idea that individuals are not the agentsof their own destiny: they are dominated by historically specificcodes, economic systems and beliefs which rob them ofautonomy. Moreover, these codes and systems and beliefs are so

complex and pervasive throughout our cultural, social andeconomic lives that we do not even recognise their presence. Weare unwitting slaves of a system with no author or architect orso it is claimed.

Marx and Engels were the first to offer a comprehensiveexplanation of this system. By claiming to see through thedominant ideologies and systems (which they argued were frothon the surface of things), they suggested we could exploreunderlying reality and avoid the distortions which superficial

analysis supposedly produces. This idea that one can penetratethe surface of the appearance of the world and analyse theunderlying dominant and subservient social forces which are thetrue shapers of human experience has profoundly influenced allthe subjects in the School, many of which pride themselves onbeing able to see through the surface to the underlying realityor structure.


John Toews, Introduction to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, TheCommunist Manifesto with Related Documents, ed. by John

Toews (New York, 1999).Terrel Farrow, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Marx

(Cambridge, 1993), ch. 1 (Marxs own life), ch. 5, 11Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000).

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Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Karl Marx athttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/.

Mark Cowling (ed.), The Communist Manifesto: NewInterpretations (Edinburgh, 1998), essays 1, 2, 3 all veryshort.


Terry Eagleton, What is Ideology?, 10 copies in the SLCPhotocopies collection at 999/E246, also available through theJRUL website.

A. Kiarina Kordela, Marxs Update of Cultural Theory, CulturalCritique 65 (2007), 43-66.

Nicholas Abercrombie et al, The Dominant Ideology Thesis,British Journal of Sociology2 (1978), 149-70.

Stephen Rigby, Marxism and History: A Critical Introduction (2ndEdn., Manchester, 1998), ch. 12: The IdealisticSuperstructure (multiple copies on short loan/ e-copy onlibrary website).




1. Marx and Engels identify two main classes, and a sub-class ofeach. What are they, and what are their characteristics? Wheredo you thinkyou are in this class structure? Why? What aboutyour lecturers/tutors? Where are they? Why?2. Are these classes conscious of who they are? Of theirrelationships to one another, to themselves? Why (not)? What

produces ignorance/ awareness?3. What mechanisms keep the poor in poverty? Is there apotential to escape it for the determined individual? Why (not)?4. Do M&E offer a hope for salvation? What is the means of thathope? How will it come?5. On pp. 81-2, M&E discuss structures like the family, marriage,nation and education. How are they characterised? What is theirfunction? Do you agree?6. What role does history and time play in this model of theworld? How do time and class fix people in their relationships?Could you transcend your time?7. Is there any room in this for the individual human to shapehis/her own destiny? How? Where? Why/why not?

8. Theme: Consciousness and Unconsciousness

Specifiedtext/image

Excerpts from New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, AnOutline of Psychoanalysis, and The Origin andDevelopment of Psychoanalysis.

Key issuesfor the

lecture

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Freud started writingin a challenging and innovative way about the human mind.

Instead of viewing it as calm or rational or in need of reform orsalvation from some external source, he saw it as a profound and

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elaborate architecture, in which one part may well be in conflictwith or unaware of another. Rather than clear and orderly, it wasa structure of dark spaces and unknown depths.

This messy psychic architecture has opened up a series of spaces

for debate and interpretation about the origins and product ofhuman culture. Yet Freud considered himself not to be aninterpreter of empty spaces or invisible depths, but to bepresenting scientific facts on a par with Darwin and Einstein.

This theory of the mind also invites us to consider: what is thehuman mind like? How might we know? Just who exactly isentitled to interpret its outputs? And can the interpreted rejectthese interpretations?


Jerome Neu, The Cambridge Companion to Freud (Cambridge,1992), intro + chs. 1, 4, 5, 10 - electronic book

Robert Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Riseand Fall of the Self(Oxford, 1988). Ch. 10

Anthony Storr, Freud: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001)Paul Roazen. Freud and his followers, in Terence Ball and

Richard Bellamy (eds), The Cambridge History ofTwentieth-Century Political Thought(Cambridge, 2003),392-411 [E book].


Grant Gillett, Consciousness and Lesser States: The EvolutionaryFoothills of the Mind, Philosophy 289 (1999), 331-360.

Howard Kaye, Was Freud a Medical Scientist or a Social Theorist?The Mysterious Development of the Hero, Sociological

Theory 4 (2003), 375-397.Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok, Questions to Freudian

Psychoanalysis: Dream Interpretation, Reality, Fantasy,Critical Inquiry 3 (1993), 567-594.

Tracy Strong. Psychoanalysis as a vocation: Freud, politics andthe heroic, Political Theory12 (1984), 51-79.

Jerome Neu, The Cambridge Companion to Freud (Cambridge,1992), intro + chs. 1, 4, 5, 10 - electronic book read introplus one chapter for a reading report.




1. Is the mind orderly, or disorderly? Peaceful, or riotous?Rational, or irrational?

2. Are there any systems which structure the mind? What arethe ego (I), superego (the more-than I) and the id (theit-force)?

3. What are conscious, unconscious, and subconsciousthoughts? What/who decides which thought gets boxed upin which part of the mind?

4. What right do we have to interpret the world? When dosymbols mean something else other than their obvious

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content? How are we entitled to say this? When is a cigarjust a cigar?

5. Does everyone have the right/ability to interpret? Or doesit belong to an elite class of experts?

6. Are sex, and the repression of sex, the engines of

experience?

9. Theme: Culture and SocietyKey text: Extracts from Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol.Specifiedtext/image

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I (London, 1990[Paris, 1976]), pp.30-35, 92-102.


Foucault was one of a wide range of thinkers in France in themid-twentieth century who were concerned about the dominanceof Marxist social science for understanding the world. Marxist

approaches were useful, they felt, but too rigid. They offered onlytwo social groups; they removed individual agency. He began toquestion the facts on which social scientists based theirarguments, and proposed that people especially expertscarefully select their facts to suit their perspective of the world,and make themselves powerful, rich and respectable.

Instead of believing that the truth about people and society isout there, and that we could just go out and gather it, like aschoolboy gathers conkers from the ground, he proposed thatpeople (from the government-appointed expert to the illiterate

peasant) are embedded in networks of beliefs, convictions,attitudes, fancies, whims, habits and desires. He called thesenetworks discourses, and claimed that uniquely in the modernworld discourses rely on knowledge, and that knowledge isthe foundation of power. He suggested that understandingdiscourses would revolutionise the way we see the world.

Firstly, he thought it would show up the self-serving and biasednature of rational knowledge, showing that collectingknowledge was usually a cover activity for making one person

powerful and clever, and another person seem helpless andstupid. Second, it made understanding society complicated:instead of simple binaries like the white oppressing the black, therich oppressing the poor, the male oppressing the female,everyone was embedded in a complex, unstable network ofoppression and liberation, in which local circumstances matteredmore than big systems. There were no global good guys andbad guys. Finally, what really matters for understandinghumans is not hard facts, but an awareness of the beliefs andassumptions which govern individuals lives as revealed bylanguage, symbols and culture.

Background

Gary Gutting, Foucault: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005).Philip Barker, Michel Foucault: An Introduction (Edinburgh, 1998).

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books/articles

Christopher Butler, Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction(Oxford, 2002)

Gary Gutting, The Cambridge Companion to Foucault2nd edn.(Cambridge, 2005), introduction + 4 electronic book

Stamford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy,

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/Detailedanalyticaltexts

Trevor Purvis and Alan Hunt, Discourse, Ideology, Discourse,Ideology, Discourse, Ideology, The British Journal ofSociology3 (1993), 473-499.

Larry Shiner, Reading Foucault: Anti-Method and the Genealogyof Power-Knowledge, History and Theory3 (1982), 382-298.

Didier Eribon, Michel Foucaults Histories of Sexuality,Journal ofLesbian and Gay Studies 1 (2001), 31-86 (you may readonly intro, and pp. 42-61 if you wish).

Kendall Philips, Rhetorical Maneuvers: Subjectivity, Power,Resistance, Philosophy and Rhetoric 4 (2006), 310-332.

Brent Pickett, Foucault and the Politics of Resistance, Polity4(1996), 445-466.

Bradley McDonald, Marx, Foucault, Genealogy, Polity3 (2002),259-284.




1. What is a discourse? Can you name 5 formal high-status

discourses? (example: psychiatry) And 5 informal, low-status (but no-less-rigid) ones? (example: football punditry)

2. How and why do people become the objects of expertdiscourse? With what effect for the people, for theexperts, for the discourse? (pp. 30-35)

3. What is power? What is it not? (Hes fairly explicit) Where isit? (pp. 92-96)

4. What role does resistance play in power? (95-6)5. Once a discourse exists, he offers four rules for

understanding it. Can you sum them up in less than two

lines each?6. Does this mean that nothing is real? There are no facts?That everything is relative?

10. Theme: Coloniality and Post-ColonialityKey text: Extracts from Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.

Specifiedtext/image

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. ConstanceFarrington, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), pp. 187-99.


This lecture examines how the power of colonising forces erodedand devalued the local and traditional values of colonisedpeoples. It will go on, through the work of Fanon, to give anexample of how colonised peoples had to re-inventand constructa specific idea of who they were and what their cultural history

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was: in order words, to construct an ethnic identity.

We will look at, for example, how the arts (literature, music,crafts) participate in the expression and revival ofall nationalcultures (including all cultures in the West) and in the production

of ethnicity and ethnic identity. Through the work of Fanon, wewill see how it is possible to begin to view ethnicity not assomething essential (that we or others have or fundamentallyare) but as something that we constructwhen we need todifferentiate ourselves from others or when we want to givevalue to a set of cultural experiences that we understand as ourown and devalue a set of cultural experiences that belong tosomeone else. Viewed like this, all ethnic identities come to seemlike tools so who makes them? Why? What for?


Robert Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford,2003).

Halford Fairchild, Frantz Fanons The Wretched of the Earth inContemporary Perspective,Journal of Black Studies, 2( 1994), 191-199.

Anthony Alessandrini (ed.), Frantz Fanon, Critical Perspectives,(London, 1999)

Neil Lazarus, The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial LiteraryStudies (Cambridge, 2004), introduction + 3, 10 electronic book.

Nigel C. Gibson, Fanon:The Postcolonial Imagination (Cambridge,2003) any one of chs. 1-4.

Azzedine Haddour (ed.), The Fanon Reader(London, 2006)Detailedanalyticaltexts

Paul Nursey-Bray, Race and Nation: Ideology in the Thought ofFrantz Fanon, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 18:1(1980), 135-142.

Michael Stoneleitner, Of Logic and Liberation: Frantz Fanon onTerrorism,Journal of Black Studies, 17:3 ( 1987), pp. 287-304.

Michael Lackey, Frantz Fanon on the Theology of Colonization,Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History2 (2002), onlinejournal.

Gautam Premnath, Remembering Fanon, Decolonizing Diaspora

in, Laura Prisman et al, Postcolonial Theory and Criticism(Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 57-74.

Dianna Fuss, Interior Colonies: Frantz Fanon and the Politics ofIdentification, Diacritics 2/3 (1994), 19-42.

T. Owens More, A Fanonian Perspective on DoubleConsciousness,Journal of Black Studies 6 (2005), 751-762.

Questions,themes ortopicsfordiscussion

in seminar



1. What are some of the effects of colonial domination on theculture and society of the colonised? Of the internal mental

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life of the colonised? How are these effects produced?Expressed? How about on the culture and society of thecolonisers? Are they left untouched by the experience?

2. What do we understand by ethnicity? Is one born white? Ordoes one become white? How? Why? Small children can see

that different people are different colours but do they seethat they are different people because they are differentcolours, or do they learn this?

3. What does it mean to talk about revolutionary culture? Whatsthe difference between that, and revolutionary politics? Whatrole does culture play in revolt and resistance?

4. How was freedom conceptualised by Fanon in the context ofcolonisation?

5. How does a culture hold on to its traditions in the context ofoppression?

11. How to Write the Essay to Get the Mark You Want

This is the lecture to miss if youre so busy trying to get a 54% that you donthave time to turn up to learn how to get 65%+.

But if you actually want to discover what lecturers are looking for in more or lessall your lectures, this is the one to go for!

12. No lecture essay and portfolio deadlines.