Source: buzzfeed
Last week, I started taking a continuing education course at NYU on, you guessed it, Modern European Philosophy (or MEP because I am in branding and love creating jargon OR because I love Beeker from the Muppets). I am taking this class because I've been interested in existentialism ever since I read Sartre's Nausea during my phase of reading anything in the Farnham Uni library that seemed remotely interesting in an (sometimes futile) effort to keep myself from going bored out of my skull. I ended up copying out several quotes and passages as I worked my way through Nausea and was surprised that I connected with the work on the deep level that I did.
My next foray into existentialism was The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I also found extremely beautiful, insightful, and poetic. And last summer I did a mini crash course, reading Camus's The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, Kafka's The Metamorphosis and other selected stories, and Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. While all of these books exercised my intellectual muscles and forced me to consider life and the world from different angles, I was left feeling that I didn't fully understand the philosophy behind the writing and wanting to know more.
I didn't have a chance or the interest in finding the time to take a philosophy course during Uni, so I set about trying to find a continuing education class on the subject here in New York. One would think this a simple task, since there are so many universities in the city, but my researches showed that only NYU and the New School offer any liberal arts continuing ed courses worth mentioning or taking. Then I found that only ancient philosophy (the Greeks and such) was offered during the fall term, and I certainly wasn't going to find a course just on existentialism. Thus, I find myself in Modern European Philosophy. Perhaps it is better to take a survey course though, as it will provide context for the philosophical environment from which the existentialists sprung.
I had my first class last Thursday and meant to write this post much sooner, but got a bit carried away with relaxing and watching movies over the long weekend. There are about 20 people in the class, about half of them older/retired, the rest in their late 20s or early 30s. Several seem to have artistic backgrounds, which has already generated some lively conversations on philosophy as it relates to art. The professor seems highly intelligent, as one would hope and suspect, but also appears to be easy going with a good sense of humor. Overall, the class seems to have a good vibe, and I am very much looking forward to the next eleven classes. It felt good to exercise a different part of my brain and learn some things that are truly new to me.
Since it was the first class and we had not received the syllabus prior, there was no reading to discuss. Instead Prof Riggins outlined philosophy prior to the Modern European period and gave an overview of the course, during which several pupils did their best to be clever and raise contrarian arguments to things the Prof was saying.
Riggins put forth that philosophy is seen as a discipline that exists between religion and science. While science is concerned with defining true and false and theology is based on faith and tradition, philosophy examines the areas of human experience that science has not yet been able to explain ("yet" being the key word, because if something is entirely unascertainable, then it belongs to the realm of theology). One point that Riggins mentioned that I found interesting enough to write down is an idea of Hegel's that philosophy's job is to understand its age, but something cannot truly be understood until it's over. Love paradoxes like that!
After getting the syllabus on Friday morning, I set out to buy the entire reading list (save for The Communist Manifesto, which we aren't reading until the end of April and which I am sure I can get used for very cheap) that same day. As much as I generally loathe Barnes & Noble, their "Pick It Up" service is rather ingenious and handy here in the city. I had to try three B&Ns before I found one of the books I was looking for - glad I didn't actually have to run around the city to do so. I also picked up The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, because the professor recommended it as a good existentialist text, adding that people needed to stop asking "What women want" because there has already been a whole book written that answers that question.
For those interested, the texts we are using are as follows:
- Monroe C. Beardsley, ed., The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche
- Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
- Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Enlightenment Reader
- Karl Marx & Frederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is A Humanism
Descartes will be the first philosopher discussed. Report to follow.
My next foray into existentialism was The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I also found extremely beautiful, insightful, and poetic. And last summer I did a mini crash course, reading Camus's The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, Kafka's The Metamorphosis and other selected stories, and Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. While all of these books exercised my intellectual muscles and forced me to consider life and the world from different angles, I was left feeling that I didn't fully understand the philosophy behind the writing and wanting to know more.
I didn't have a chance or the interest in finding the time to take a philosophy course during Uni, so I set about trying to find a continuing education class on the subject here in New York. One would think this a simple task, since there are so many universities in the city, but my researches showed that only NYU and the New School offer any liberal arts continuing ed courses worth mentioning or taking. Then I found that only ancient philosophy (the Greeks and such) was offered during the fall term, and I certainly wasn't going to find a course just on existentialism. Thus, I find myself in Modern European Philosophy. Perhaps it is better to take a survey course though, as it will provide context for the philosophical environment from which the existentialists sprung.
I had my first class last Thursday and meant to write this post much sooner, but got a bit carried away with relaxing and watching movies over the long weekend. There are about 20 people in the class, about half of them older/retired, the rest in their late 20s or early 30s. Several seem to have artistic backgrounds, which has already generated some lively conversations on philosophy as it relates to art. The professor seems highly intelligent, as one would hope and suspect, but also appears to be easy going with a good sense of humor. Overall, the class seems to have a good vibe, and I am very much looking forward to the next eleven classes. It felt good to exercise a different part of my brain and learn some things that are truly new to me.
Since it was the first class and we had not received the syllabus prior, there was no reading to discuss. Instead Prof Riggins outlined philosophy prior to the Modern European period and gave an overview of the course, during which several pupils did their best to be clever and raise contrarian arguments to things the Prof was saying.
Riggins put forth that philosophy is seen as a discipline that exists between religion and science. While science is concerned with defining true and false and theology is based on faith and tradition, philosophy examines the areas of human experience that science has not yet been able to explain ("yet" being the key word, because if something is entirely unascertainable, then it belongs to the realm of theology). One point that Riggins mentioned that I found interesting enough to write down is an idea of Hegel's that philosophy's job is to understand its age, but something cannot truly be understood until it's over. Love paradoxes like that!
After getting the syllabus on Friday morning, I set out to buy the entire reading list (save for The Communist Manifesto, which we aren't reading until the end of April and which I am sure I can get used for very cheap) that same day. As much as I generally loathe Barnes & Noble, their "Pick It Up" service is rather ingenious and handy here in the city. I had to try three B&Ns before I found one of the books I was looking for - glad I didn't actually have to run around the city to do so. I also picked up The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, because the professor recommended it as a good existentialist text, adding that people needed to stop asking "What women want" because there has already been a whole book written that answers that question.
For those interested, the texts we are using are as follows:
- Monroe C. Beardsley, ed., The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche
- Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
- Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Enlightenment Reader
- Karl Marx & Frederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is A Humanism
Descartes will be the first philosopher discussed. Report to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment