Existence, Freedom, and Rebellion: The Politics of Existentialism and Phenomenology

Undergraduate / Graduate

How do we find freedom in an alienated world? What kind of responsibility do we have for our own existence? Does freedom require inward transformation or outward struggle? In this course, we examine how thinkers within the existential and phenomenological traditions brought their philosophical frameworks to bear on political questions. Broadly speaking, phenomenology is a tradition within twentieth-century continental thought that sought to develop an account of the structures of conscious subjectivity. Growing out of the work of Edmund Husserl, who wanted to put philosophy back on a proper scientific footing, it then became powerfully influential for a variety of continental traditions. This course examines how thinkers within the phenomenological tradition used its tools to consider foundational political themes like freedom, alienation, domination, and rebellion. Of particular concern will be the various conceptions of the human that phenomenologists defend and the political possibilities such conceptions entail. We will also read critiques of phenomenology from competing schools of social and political theory. Key thinkers discussed include Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young, and Theodor Adorno.