Spring 2027 Courses
This course will be dedicated to a close reading of Mauric Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology
of Perception. As we move forward, we will take stock of the way Merleau- Ponty both
critiques and advances key phenomenological ideas first developed by Edmund Husserl.
We will find that Merleau-Ponty’s discussions of the body schema, pre-reflective intentionality,
sedimentation, and the relationship between action and perception present us with
conditions for the possibility of a form of sense-making that proceeds at an implicit,
embodied level. Though this seems to place most of the emphasis on the body, an important
piece of Merleau-Ponty’s argument is about how body and world open onto and animate
each other. Each is constituted as meaningful as we move, act, and are acted upon.
This rich phenomenological account of the body and its relationship to the world has
implications for how we should understand embodied cognition and opens up a field
of inquiry related to how bodies are constituted within personal, interpersonal, social,
and political spaces. As such, we will, where time permits and as our interests suggest,
explore contemporary applications of his work.
What should philosophy begin with, if not a given fact? Fichte answers that it must
begin with the I’s own activity. This response draws on Descartes and Kant and shapes
German Idealism. This seminar is a close reading of Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre
(1794-99). We begin with the question of beginning and the choice between dogmatism
and idealism, then work through the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1794-95):
the self-positing I, the reciprocal limitation of I and not-I, the Anstoß (check)
and the productive imagination, and the role of practical striving. We then turn to
Fichte’s attempt at a revised presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre (1796-99), following
the regressive ascent from the intellectual intuition of immediate self-consciousness
to its condition in pure willing, and the constructive descent via embodied self-consciousness
and the Aufforderung (summons) to the individual I. The seminar will interest students
of Kant and post-Kantian philosophy, philosophical method, theories of subjectivity,
and the relation between theoretical and practical reason. Familiarity with Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason is strongly recommended.
This seminar examines the intersections of power, embodiment, and political resistance
through the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, as well as feminist thinkers
who extend, revise, or challenge their methodological approaches. Tracing the ways
in which power operates through institutions, discourses, and social norms, we will
explore how bodies, identities, and forms of subjectivity are constituted and contested,
and the way in which testimonial authority shapes conditions of recognition and political
agency. The course also investigates collective practices of resistance, analyzing
forms of protest, social movements, and organized political action through the lenses
of feminist theories. Engaging authors such as Saidiya Hartman, Patricia Hill Collins,
José Medina and others working at the intersection of epistemic injustice, social
movements, and democratic struggle, we will consider how marginalized voices challenge
dominant regimes of knowledge and create new possibilities for political transformation.