Universität Wien

180085 SE Postmodernism - Ethics After The Great Wars (2016S)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 18 - Philosophie
Continuous assessment of course work

In the wake of the two World Wars came a firm confidence that the supposed optimism of modern thought had indeed failed us. These supposed failures of modern life birthed a new form of philosophical skepticism that sought to reconceive what it meant to be human. This movement today is called postmodernism or poststructuralism. It arose in response to the breakdown of traditional superstructures of thought, to taken-for-granted historical dimensions of human life, and the clear contradictions of Western culture and politics. And today, with the challenges of the never-ending technologicization of our societies, the growth of mass media, and the political crises that are part and parcel of globalization, these thinkers should be taken seriously and considered carefully and critically. Postmodernism poses serious challenges to any attempt to explain it straightforwardly or systematically, due to its suspicion of those very concepts. Postmodern thinkers deconstruct the objectivity of knowledge, the modern metanarratives that drive the ideals of social progress, the binaries of structuralism (e.g. presence/absence) and the view that the mind is at the center of knowledge. The claim to understand the historically contingent, contextualized, and inevitable facts of life, or the view that transcendental relationality is the key to grasping the sense of the world. In taking for granted the contingency of justice and peace, the order of things demands a response and responsibility of suspicion. This course is devoted to the latter half of 20th continental philosophy, considers premonitions to the breakdown of modernity, and topically spans Religion, Technology and Civilization, and contemporary ethical debates.
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 45 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Thursday 10.03. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 17.03. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 07.04. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 14.04. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 21.04. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 28.04. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 12.05. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 19.05. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 02.06. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 09.06. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 16.06. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 23.06. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 30.06. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal 2G, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. II/2.Stock, 1010 Wien

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Postmodernism and Ethics are generally seen as antithetical to one another. Postmodernism is generally reduced to relativism; and the field of Ethics is often looked-upon with suspicion by those with a deep hermeneutical awareness that philosophical thinking requires. The aims of this course are to inform students of the broad literature base available concerning postmodernism and poststructuralism, and to determine how and in what ways there are identifiable ethics that are/can be derived from these various thinkers, interdisciplinary fields of study, and means of interpretation.
Questions that will be asked throughout this course include: What is Postmodernism, what is it not, and why does it matter for Ethics? Can postmodernism deconstruct the philosophical legacy without also forfeiting the possibility of shared knowledge? And if not, does it add anything of value today to philosophy? The course will at times be generous to the burgeoning tradition of "postmodernism," yet at other points, provide critical reflection that allows the student to reflect upon the values that we hold today in our so-called "postmodern" societies. By the end of the course, the student will have a broader and deeper understanding, not only of the philosophical landscape of postmodern literature, but also how it has come to influence the cultural norms in which we live today.
The difficulties that Postmodern thought faces today, however, is whether or not it can deconstruct knowledge without being reduced to relativism.

Assessment and permitted materials

Didactics
Course Requirements
1. Regular class attendance and active participation.
2. Reading of all the material assigned for the class sessions.
3. Completion of all agreed upon assignments on assigned dates.
4. Participation in organized in-class discussions.

Course Assessment
1. Final Project (presentation or paper)--40%
2. 2 Quizzes -- 30% (April & May )
3. General class participation/discussion/attendance --30%

Class Participation
This is a seminar course, and it is expected that the student participate in the course discussions. Failure to do so will be detrimental to the final course grades. Further, if a student misses more than 1* course meeting during semester, this will result in a 5% reduction per course missed (of the 30%).

Final Project
Each student has the choice to do *one of the following: EITHER
-give a presentation on one assigned text/essay for a course (This will cover the essay/reading, and offer questions for the reading, introduce the thinker, etc.)
OR
-write one 10 page paper on any issue, topic, thinker or text relevant to the topic of Postmodern Ethics. Students are not restricted to a topic or thinker whose work is explored in class. The argument, however, should be philosophical (i.e., not coming from science, art, etc) and be developed with such methods. The Paper is due no later than ___.

2 Quizzes
The quizzes will be based on just a few, short questions, on which the student will write short answers. The quizzes will be on __ and ___, and will cover material from the following weeks. I will send out a study guide 5 days before each quiz, which will give the students information on how to prepare.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Course Assessment
1. Final Project (presentation or paper)--40%
2. 2 Quizzes -- 30% (April & May )
3. General class participation/discussion/attendance --30%

Examination topics

Postmodernism, Ethics, Poststructuralism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Religion, Violence, Political Theory

Reading list

Week 1: What is Postmodernism, what is it not, and Why does it Matter for Ethics?

Week 2: The Human (and Postmodern) conditions of Society
Reading: Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

Week 3: Before Postmodernism there was the Unconscious Turn
Reading: Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents

Week 4: Destruction, Deformalization, Appearance
Reading: Heidegger, Introduction II to Being and Time

Week 4: Matters of Fact
Reading: Michel Foucault, selection from Madness and Civilization
and What is Enlightenment? (in the Foucault Reader )

Week 5: The Ethics of Discipline and Punishing
Reading: Michel Foucault, selection from Discipline and Punish

Week 6: God Ethics
Reading: Emmanuel Levinas, -God, Death, and Time; and selection from Basic Philosophical Writings

Week 7: Introduction to Deconstruction
Reading: selections from Derrida. Of Grammatology

Week 8: The challenges of Biopolitics
Reading: Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and On Forgiveness
Frederick Jameson, selections from Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Week 9: Repeat after me
Reading: Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (part 1)

Week 10: The Rounded edges of Society
Reading: Barthes Mythologies

Week 11: Difference and Repetition
Reading: Deleuze, selections from Difference and Repetition

Week 12: Questioning Identities
Reading: Judith Butler, "Introduction" from Undoing Gender (2004)
Slavoj Zizek, You May! in London Review of Books, vol. 21 (March 1999)

Additional Relevant Literature

Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment

Althusser, Louis, Lenin and Philosophy

Bakhtin, Mikhial, The Dialogical Imagination

Baudrillard, Jean, 1976, Symbolic Exchange and Death,
-Simulacra and Simulation

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies

Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodern Ethics

Bloechl, Jeffrey. The Face of the Other and the Trace of God: Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble

de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life

Deleuze, Gilles, 1983 [1962], Nietzsche and Philosophy
-- 1994 [1968], Difference and Repetition,

Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix, 1983 [1972],Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Derrida, Jacques, 1973 [1967], Speech and Phenomena and other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs,

- Of Grammatology

Fannon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

.1965, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

Foucault, A History of Sexuality, Vol 1

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents and The Future of an Illusion

Geertz Clifford, The Interpretation of Culture

Girard, Rene. Violence and the Sacred

Gramsci, Antonio. The Prison Notebooks

Heidegger, Martin. The Origin of the Work of Art, The Question Concerning Technology

Hooks, Bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Jameson, Frederick. Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art

Lacan, Jacques, 1977, Écrits: A Selection

Lyotard, François. The Postmodern Condition

Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority
Levinas, God, Death, and Time

Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia

Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man

Raschke, Carl. Postmodernism and the Revolution in Religious Theory.

Ricoeur, Paul. The Conflict of Interpretation

Said, Edward. Orientalism

Taylor, Victor E., and Winquist, Charles E., 2001. Encyclopedia of Postmodernism

Vattimo, Gianni, 1988, The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture.

Association in the course directory

BA M 6.2, PP 57.3.4, UF PP 09

Last modified: Mo 07.09.2020 15:36