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European Studies - Philosophy of the Humanities 1 & 2 Lecture Notes
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European Studies - Philosophy of the Humanities 1 & 2 Lecture Notes
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Philosophy of the HumanitiesWeek 1 - 14.02.22 / Enlightenment
Notion of Human Being
- 1800: emergence of idea of human being as an object we can study
Factors contribute to social/epistemic constellations: 1. Philosophy
- Kant
- Hegel
2. Rise of Bourgeoisie
3. Social institutions
- Print media
- Public sphere (debating)
- University (free thought)
Enlightenment
- Trust in powers of human reason to interpret the world
- Universal knowledge
- Knowledge: not transparent→ given
- Q: How is it possible ?
- Subject-object distinction
- Mind-world/mind-matter/mind-body
- Mind: capacity to gain knowledge about the world
Kant
- Epistemology: theory of knowledge
- Inquiry into conditions of possibility of knowledge → transcendental questioning
Empiricism (Hume)
- Knowledge based on experience
- Kant didn’t agree→ something being the cause of smth else
- We have concept
Positivism
- Legitimate scientific knowledge restricted to facts
- He believed in this → not based on experience
- Science→ differentiated from magic ecc 1800
A Priori statement
- Can be justifies
- Not based on experience or definition
Main Themes
1. Subject - object
- Object: known
- Subject→ knowing
- constructs and structures experience of the object
- Through forms of intuition/schemes
, - Rationalism: knowledge employs concepts that are given in advance of
experience (vs empiricism)
- Knowledge→ is universal: valis for all reasonable subjects
- Ethics and freedom are rational→ laws we rationally set
- Humanities→ present human being as simultaneously subject and object
- Object human being→ constituted through human subject
Contrast Lorde “Poetry is Not a Luxury”
- Different notion of freedom
- White EU rationality→ poetry’s integration of feeling and thought
- Mode of knowledge
- Freedom is different → Lorde
- Think abt feelings too
- Liberating freedom from whiteness
which circumstances it
- Black woman poetry→ awaken feeling that are at risk in system of profit
- Poetry→ brings together feeling and freedom
- I feel, therefore I can be free (38)
- Quality of light→ scrutinize life
- Not a luxury → vital necessity (pg 37)
- Where do we come from?
- Lorde: Colonialism→ people are seen as colonizers
- Protect understanding of difference
- Kant→ wrong for setting aside feelings
- Challenging universalism → rational being and emotional
- Harmonizing both into the subject
- EU philosophy → wanted to include black women
- Makes public sphere public
Hegel
1. Notion of spirit
- Individual consciousness in relation to others
- Dimension of individuality
- Social institutions→ objective kind of spirit (court, state)
- Collective consciousness (state of reflection in society)
- Spirit→ sole reality
- Developing process of dialectical development
- Movement from thesis to antithesis & synthesis
- Negation, sublation→ culminate in freedom and self
consciousness
- Distinction advanced-primitive people and nations
- Idea of freedom→ not in state of understanding if you’re antithesis or
synthesis
, 2. Historicity
- Continual development
- Saw EU in advanced society
- Africa: dark continent
3. Teleology
- Art and culture lead towards freedom
Foucault
- Episteme: large-scale conceptual framework for producing knowledge in distinctive
era
- 3 epistemes: 1600-1800
1800 +
- Historically variable principles and assumptions
1. 1600-1800: Classical Episteme
- Split between science and things
- Subject-object
- Representation-entity represented
- Distinctions bw signs and what they stand for
- Classical episteme→ ordering things
- Maps
- Taxonomies
- Think abt people in terms of social categories
- Comparative assessments
- Making knowledge→ episteme
2. 1800: Modern Episteme
- Conditions of possibility of knowledge→ Kant
- Interested in what makes knowledge possible
- Development of time→ progressively unfolding phenomenon
- Historicity of existence (Hegel)
- Episteme→ produce new objects of knowledge
- Significant to think abt human being: life, labor, language
- Studying human: subject tied to life, labor, language → HUMANITIES
- Language: completely transparent
Humanities
- Culture: feeling, vernacular paintings
- Cosmopolitanism, nationalisms, colonial expansion → civilization projects
- Humboldt + Schiller→ Bildung
- Self formation
- Education geared to actualization of human capacities
Ex: moral, epistemic, political, aesthetic
- University
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