Phi 600 - Fall, 2005 -
Postmodernisms:
A Philosophical Introduction
John
D. Caputo
Thomas
J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanites
and Professor of Philosophy
Required
Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason (Indiana UP
ppbk.)
Jacques
Derrida and Catherine Malabou, Counterpath
(Stanford UP ppbk.)
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (
Alain Badiou, Ethics (Verso Paperback)
_____. Deleuze:
The Clamor of Being (U. Minnesota Press ppbk)
Reserve Room
All these books,
including the additional Derrida readings, have been placed
on reserve in the Bird Library.
Course Requirements
(1) Seminar Participation (20%)
(2) 2 Research Papers (40% each)
These papers should be approximately
4,000-4,500 words long.
The paper should be prepared in accordance
with a standard style sheet and should be correctly documented (notes and
bibliography).
The topic of the first paper is Heidegger
and/or Derrida and of the second paper Deleuze and/or some aspect of Badiou’s
critique of postmodernity.
Bibliographical assistance is available on
line in the library. Philosopher's Index is the best place to start.
I have also put several books on reserve n the Bird Library for your
use.
Deadlines:
Paper #1 - proposal due Oct.
5; paper due Oct. 26
Paper
#2 - proposal
due Nov. 16; paper due Dec. 16
Office (HL 505)
Although
I have scheduled office hours–Tuesday, 3:45-5:30, Wednesday, 1:00-4:15–you
should, for safety's sake, make an appt in advance by email at johncaputo@comcast.net or jcaputo@syr.edu.
Topic
This
course will undertake a strictly philosophical introduction to the idea of
postmodernism, not as a cultural phenomenon, but as a set of philosophical
theses about modernity, subjectivity, singularity, being, truth and thought,
all of which will be clustered around the organizing concept of the “event,” a
term that has assumed central philosophical significance in this movement.
The
course will fall broadly into two parts, in which I will take up first what we
might broadly and loosely call the “post-phenomenological” thinkers, (the
“later”) Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, both of whom have a point of
departure in Husserl, and then in the second half, Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou. The background figure for Deleuze is not
Husserl but Nietzsche, although The Logic
of Sense is perhaps the one work in which Deleuze makes his critical appreciation
of Husserl most clear. Badiou is not a
postmodernist at all, but a neo-Marxist and Lacanian critic of postmodern
ideas, who belongs in this course both as an interpreter/interlocutor/critic of
Deleuze and as important voice of opposition and critique of postmodern
conceptions of truth and universality.
We will begin the
course with a study of Heidegger’s The
Principle of Reason, one of Heidegger’s most insightful and lucid
statements of his “later” standpoint. In an ongoing meditation upon Leibniz’s “Principle of Sufficient
Reason” Heidegger lays out the fundamental presuppositions of “modern
metaphysics,” which he critiques in the light of the early Greek experience of physis, and whose upshot he locates in
the contemporary epoch of the rule of global technology, and this by way of a
dialogue with Leibniz and Angelus Silesius, a 16th century mystical
poet. In many ways, this
delimitation of modernity opens the space within which current post-modern
debates takes place. The guiding idea in
Heidegger’s interpretation is what he calls the “event” (Ereignis) or “sending” (Geschick)
of Being.
Next we will take up the work of Jacques Derrida by reading Counterpath, a book he co-authored with
Catherine Malabou, which is a writing experiment in which Malabou charts the
Derrida’s intellectual journey while Derrida writes to Malabou from various
locations in his endless travels. Along
with that book we will read several essays by
Derrida–on Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason, justice and the law, and
forgiveness and hospitality. Again,
Derrida’s guiding idea is what he calls the “event” (évenément), which Derrida thinks in terms of unforeseeability,
surprise, experience, the future, which is charted out by Malabou in terms of
the deconstruction of the logic of “derivation” by virtue of the movements of
the drift (dérive).
In
the second half, we will undertake a reading of Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense, which is arguably his major theoretical
work. In this book Deleuze lays the
foundation for his project of reversing Platonism (that is, a philosophy of
multiplicity, becoming, time, univocity, and simulacrum, rather than unity,
being, eternity, depth, analogy and truth) and to do this by way of a theory of
“sense” (or pure meaning) and its co-constitution by non-sense. This is undertaken
by means of a dialogue with Stoic logic and the paradoxical logic of Lewis
Carroll in the name of what he calls a new logic of the “event.” (Here Deleuze appears to be all the things
that Badiou claims it would be a misinterpretation to attribute to him.)
We
will first read Badiou’s Ethics in
which he sets out in a pretty straightforward way the
essentials of his own thought, which is also organized around the “event” which
transforms the subject into a militant.
Then we will read his Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, which is a “strong reading” of
Deleuze, one written from Badiou’s own philosophical standpoint (like
Heidegger’s readings of the early Greeks or Kant). But it raises not only the obvious question
of whether Badiou has transformed Deleuze into Badiou but the opposite one, to
what extent Badiou’s thought really differs from Deleuze. In this way we
should get a good sense of the central issues raised by a characteristic
postmodern view (Deleuze) and its critique.
Schedule
of Classes
August 31 Orientation:
“Postmodernism” and the “Event.”
September 7 Heidegger,
Principle of Reason, Lectures 1-4
14 Lectures 5-9
21 Lectures
10-13; Address
28 Derrida
and Malabou, Counterpath, pp. 1-92
+
“The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils,” in
Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy
2, pp.129-155
October 5 Counterpath, pp. 93-184
+
“Force of Law: The Mystical Foundations of Authority” (Part I), in
Deconstruction and the Possibility of
Justice, pp. 3-29.
Paper
# 1 Proposal due
12 Counterpath, pp. 185- end.
+
“As if it were possible: ‘Within Such Limits’,” Negotiations, 343-370
19 Deleuze, Logic of Sense, pages TBA
26 Deleuze,
Logic of Sense, pages TBA
Paper
# 1 due
November 2 Deleuze, Logic of Sense, pages TBA
9 Deleuze, Logic
of Sense, concluded.
Badiou,
Ethics, chaps. 1-3
16 Ethics, chaps.
4-5, Conclusion, and “Interview”
Paper
#2 proposal due
23
Thanksgiving
30 Badiou,
Deleuze: The
Clamor of Being, chs. 1-2
December 7 The Clamor of Being, chs. 3 - end.
16 [Paper #2 due]