Philosophical Anthropology - 2nd semester
Code
711031051
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Filosofia
Credits
6
Teacher in charge
João Pardana Constâncio
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a). Acquire a basic historical-philosophical knowledge in the field of Anthropology.
b). Acquire the ability to recognize and understand the main tendencies and features of the European philosophical tradition regarding the concept of human nature.
c). Develop a critical attitude and acquire the ability to reflect on the main issues of Philosophical Anthropology.
d) . Acquire a basic knowledge of the complex and multilayered problems that exist in the field of Philosophical Anthropology and of the different research areas that intersect in it.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
The first part of the course is a study of Michel Foucault’s problematization of the Enlightenment Conception of “Man” in his Discipline and Punishment. The second part of the course deals with Axel Honneth’s critique of the concept of power in Foucault’s book. The kernel of this critique is the idea that in describing all human relations as power-relations and in highlighting the “trans-subjective” nature of power-relations Foucault fails to see the descriptive and normative potentialities of the intersubjective phenomenon of “recognition” (Anerkennung) and “struggles for recognition”. By contraposing power and recognition in this way, Honneth brings to light a fundamental tension between the conception of the human in the Hegelian and in the Nietzschean traditions. The third part of the course consists in an attempt to think through this tension on the basis of a study of Robert Brandom’s reflection on the conception of human rationality in the history of philosophy, particularly in Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Sellers, as well as on the basis of a study of Robert Pippin’s view of Hegel’s and Nietzsche’s “expressivism”.
Bibliography
NIETZSCHE, F., Para a Genealogia da Moral, trad. José M. Justo, Lisboa, Relógio d’Água, 2000
FOUCAULT, Michel, Oeuvres, Paris, Gallimard (Pléiade), 2 vols., 2015
HONNETH, Axel, Kritik der Macht, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1988
PIPPIN, Robert B., Nietzsche, Psychology, & First Philosophy, Chicago & London, The University of Chicago Press, 2010
PIPPIN, Robert B., Hegel on Self-Consciousness. Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2011
Teaching method
(a) Most classes are dialogued lectures.
(b) Several of them work as a \"seminar\" (with reading, commentary, and analyses of texts projected in pdf format).
(c) Other classes (so-called \"practical\" classes) consist in critical discussions with the students of previously presented themes and problems.
Evaluation method
(e) Students are firstly evaluated by an exam that takes place after the first half of the course, which weighs 20% in the final mark;
(f) The crucial element is an exam at the end of the semester (70%);
(g) A positive participation in the classes is valued (10%).