Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Foundations of Study in the Arts: SAHC 10002 Foundations of Study in the Arts SAHC 10002

French Troops confront Algerian Terrorists/Freedom Fighters in Algiers Seminar 10

Contact details...................................................................................................4 Groups and Timetables.........................................................................................5 Lecture & Seminar Schedule..............................................................................6 Course Assessment...............................................................................................6 How the Seminar/Portfolio System Works: Important!.......................................7 Submitting Weekly Reading: Rules and Guidelines...........................................8 Essay Questions ................................................................................................9 Resits...............................................................................................................10 Ten Habits of First Class Students...................................................................10 General reading..................................................................................................11 12. No lecture essay and portfolio deadlines...................................................25

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Foundations of Study in the Arts SAHC10002

Contact details
Course Director: Dr Leif Jerram Email: l.jerram@manchester.ac.uk Room: W.2.07, Samuel Alexander Building Office hours: Tues and Thurs, 11-12

The Course

Aims

This course introduces you to the key ideas, concepts and thinkers which underpin the ways we approach the world in the different disciplines in the arts, from archaeology to literature, history to film, art to drama, religion to music. You will have heard of Jesus, Marx and Freud, but may be less familiar with Wollstonecrafts arguments about gender, or Fanons writing on ethnicity. Each week, you will explore a central theme in a lecture, a seminar, and your written submissions, and engage directly with the texts or images at the heart of the debate from Platos Republic, through Giottos frescos, to Emmanuel Kants discussion of reason. By doing so, you will gain a broad foundation in the ideas and concepts you will use throughout your degree programme in the School. 1. To provide a common introduction to some of the central issues and ideas found in the programmes within the School. 2. To help students develop an awareness of how different thinkers, concepts and terms underpin scholarship in the programmes within the School. 3. To encourage students to develop critical skills by analysing a variety of key texts. At the end of the course students will normally: 1. Have acquired preliminary knowledge of how some key concepts are used in different cultural and historical contexts. 2. Have developed an understanding of the importance of a range of critical thinkers. 3. Demonstrated some knowledge of the critical methods which link many of the disciplines within the School.

Learning Outcomes

Groups and Timetables

If you do not know which seminar group you are in, look on your blackboard pages for times. If it is not there, please see the undergraduate office of the School of Arts as soon as possible. This office is located in A6, Samuel Alexander Building. Similarly, if you find you need to change groups because of a timetable clash, see the office staff or change your seminar groups online. If you do not attend the correct group, you will be marked as absent. If you do not confirm group changes with the office, you will be marked absent. Tutors and lecturers cannot change your group allocation. Please contact your seminar leader with queries, or check the course pack.
Lecture wks 1-3, 5, 7-12 Lecture wks 4 & 6 Seminar1 Seminar2 Seminar3 Seminar4 Seminar5 Seminar6 Seminar7 Seminar8 Seminar9 Seminar10 Seminar11 Seminar12 Seminar13 Seminar14 Thursday 1pm-2pm Thursday 1pm-2pm Stopford Theatre 6 Stopford Theatre 3

Monday 09.00 - 10.00 Monday 10.00 11.00 Monday 09.00 - 10.00 Monday 10.00 11.00 Tuesday 14.00 15.00 Tuesday 15.00 16.00 Tuesday 14.00 15.00 Tuesday 15.00 16.00 Wednesday 10.00 - 11.00 Wednesday 11.00 12.00 Wednesday 10.00 - 11.00 Wednesday 11.00 12.00 Friday 11.00 12.00 Friday 12.00 13.00

Williamson 4.04 Williamson 4.04 Dover Street B.S.7 Dover Street B.S.7 Uni Place 4.207 Uni Place 4.207 Sam Alex S1.10 Sam Alex S1.10 Dover Street B.S.7 Dover Street B.S.7 Simon 2 (2.39) Simon 2 (2.39) Uni Place 5.206 Uni Place 5.206

Katherine Fennelly Katherine Fennelly Ravi Hensman Ravi Hensman Victoria Glass Victoria Glass Katan Alder Katan Alder Carina Spaulding Carina Spaulding Luke Kelly Luke Kelly Ellen McInnes Ellen McInnes

Lecture & Seminar Schedule

1. Introduction: Why these giants? 2. Theme: Truth and Reality. Text: Platos Republic, Allegory of the Cave. 3. Theme: Disputing Truth, Rational Faith Text: Aquinas. 4. Theme: Faith, Progress and Reason. Key text: Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? 5. Theme: Grace, Salvation and the English Language. Text: The Gospel According to St. Matthew, King James Version. 6. Theme: Men and Women. Key text: Extracts from Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 7. Theme: Society and the Human Will Key text: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. 8. Theme: Consciousness and Unconsciousness Key text: Extracts from Freud. 9. Theme: Culture and Society Key text: Extracts from Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. I 10. Theme: Coloniality and Post-Coloniality Key text: Extracts from Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. 11. Concluding lecture: How to Write the Essay

Course Assessment
One assessed essay of c. 2,500 words (50% in total). Submission date: Thursday 10 May, 2012 by 12.00 p.m. THIS IS MIDDAY. Work submitted late will receive zero. One portfolio of your marked seminar preparation work, consisting of 9 marked pieces of reflection on the reading and themes to be discussed in your small groups (50% in total). Un-marked pieces may not be included. If you fraudulently include pieces which should not be there, this will be treated as academic malpractice, and reported accordingly to the universitys disciplinary panel. Thursday 10 May, 2012 by 12.00 p.m. THIS IS MIDDAY. Work submitted late will receive zero.

You will submit this work online via Blackboard. You will receive further instructions on how to do this closer to the time, so make sure that you check your emails.

How the Seminar/Portfolio System Works: Important!

Each week, you will have one lecture and one seminar. The subjects for the lectures are in this booklet. Your seminars will follow the themes of the lectures closely. Altogether, you will cover nine substantive topics over the course of the semester. Every week, you need to read: 1. the central text (i.e., the text by the author were studying) 2. AND some demanding secondary reading on the topic for the up-coming seminar, listed under case study. 3. AND some of the background reading which is general/introductory in nature, listed as background. This is quite demanding, but it a) means that you wont have a sudden rush of reading to do for your essay, because youll have done a lot of it already, and b) means youll get an intellectual rush as you go on quite an exciting journey. Each week, you must submit a reflection on your reading (the central text and the demanding secondary reading) to your tutor, by 5pm on the day before your seminar. This reading must not address a general background text these are things we assume youre doing anyway. Because there is no exam for this course, it is assumed according to university regulations, that youll be doing about 15 hours a week work on this course. If you feel you cant do this, then you can change off the course in the first week. Most students say that this is the best course that theyve done at university they all say that its the hardest. So if youre at university for an easy ride, and youre not that curious about ideas, and you dont like doing work, then this probably isnt the course for you. You wont be judged for changing off it in week one! Your weekly reflection should address the following rubric: What did you identify as being most interesting, controversial, helpful, relevant or confusing in your reading of central text and the challenging secondary literature, in the light of the issues highlighted in lectures, and for next weeks seminar in the coursebook? Why? Do not summarize the content of the work, but try to highlight the ways your reading tackled, avoided, challenged or agreed with: a) the issues highlighted in the lecture summary in the course booklet; b) the issues highlighted/ideas presented in the lecture; c) the issues highlighted for discussion by your seminar leader or the coursebook for that seminar. d) The issues highlighted in the general reading for that seminar. In particular, try to explore the authors argument about the big theoretical/philosophical issues for that week, and give a sense of your own view on how the evidence and argument fit together. 7

You dont have to address every single issue just pick one or two big ones. But you do need to identify what you perceived to be most important, and the issue(s) which your reading most closely tackles and engages with. You can afford to be quite personal, but dont just retreat to I think Plato was right because. Also, try not to critique academics for being boring or repetitive or pretentious. They are often all these things, but they dont take kindly to being told, and it rather implies that you havent bothered to find the important part of their writing.

Submitting Weekly Reading: Rules and Guidelines

1. Length: It must be 250-300 words long, and must be sent as an email attachment in Microsoft Word no other format is acceptable. 2. File format: It must be saved as Firstname Surname Week 2.doc Week 3.doc etc. So if I were submitting the work, the filename would be Leif Jerram Week 4.doc etc. Make sure it is not saved as .docx. 3. Presentation rules: It must be formatted according to the rules in the How to Research and Write guide on the course blackboard page, and fully referenced, with a full bibliographic reference, as per the instructions in How to Research and Write. Pay attention to this its very frustrating having your work corrected for these issues over and over, but these issues will be hammered home. 4. Deadline: It must arrive in the tutors inbox before 5pm of the day before the seminar. Submitting the work is a condition of attendance at the seminar; attending the seminar is a condition of getting the work marked. 5. Topic: It must address one of the pieces in the case study section of the weekly reading. 6. Marks: If you do not attend the seminar, the work will not be marked, and you will not be able to include it in your portfolio. If you are kept away from the university for a good reason (illness leading to hospitalisation, death of a close relative etc.) then you can apply for special circumstances. You need to attend the seminar for the work to count , as the work is designed to support the seminar, and enable discussion there. 7. Severe illness/personal disruption: You are allowed to miss one piece of work over the semester out of the 9, but only because of a severe illness or a major personal crisis (the death of a close relative, for example). You do not need to provide evidence for this, but it is assumed that you will be able to provide evidence for it. For every piece of work less than 8, however, you will lose 1/8th of the mark. 8. Extensions/Excuses. You cant have any/they dont exist. If a major illness or life trauma (like breaking a leg or the death of a parent) disrupt your studies, then you can apply for any lost marks to be replaced according to School of Arts procedure (the rules are in your departments student handbook). But this does not cover things like colds, being a bit upset, having a lot of work on, etc. If you miss several pieces of work, you must present special circumstances evidence for ALL of your absences.

Portfolio and Marking 1. Each week, your seminar leader will comment on these pieces, and return them to you by email. Save them and print them out. MAKE SURE YOU KEEP THESE RESPONSES! They should be kept safe, as they cannot be replaced, and make up 40% of your mark. If you lose them, you will receive Zero. This happens to at least one person a year. Dont let it be you. 2. The mark is for improvement over time, not attainment each week. These marked responses will constitute your portfolio, and the improvement you make over the semester in the quality of your analysis and writing will be judged by these weekly pieces of work. Every year, a couple of people try to play the system and do rubbish work at the beginning and magically improve at the end. Every year, it fails. Concise analysis of complex arguments is not something which you can already do, but which everyone else needs to work at. It only comes with practice. 3. Finality of deadlines. Only work which is submitted on time, and only work which bears your seminar leaders comments, can be included in the portfolio. You may miss one piece of work due to severe illness. You will lose 1/8th of your portfolio marks for each piece below 8. If there is a serious reason why there are gaps (protracted hospitalisation, death of a parent, sibling or child etc.), then you may submit a Special Circumstances form with the portfolio, along with your formal evidence (letter from a consultant etc.). Neither your tutors, nor the lecturers, nor the course director can make any allowances or give any extensions, so please do not ask. It is an unbreakable university regulation. Do not put me or your tutors in a difficult situation. The mark you get for the portfolio will reflect your responsiveness to your tutors comments over the term, not a magic hurdle which you can either jump or not. If you change, your mark will improve. If you dont, it will decline. Each piece of seminar work and the final essay must be correctly laid out, and have proper bibliographic references at the end of it, and proper footnoting throughout, according to the rules given on pages 10-12.

Essay Questions
Students should answer with reference to at least two of the weekly themes encountered during the course. The precise nature of what you plan to analyse, how and why should be explained in the introduction of the essay. Make sure that you show your seminar leader a formal, well-researched bibliography and plan before you embark on the essay, and make sure that the essay focuses at least 80% on the issues covered in the course.

Make sure you have mastered the instructions on how to write an essay in How to Research and Write. Dont throw easy marks away here! 1. Can we rely on the evidence of our senses? 2. What impresses you more: the capacity of culture to liberate, or to mask oppression? 3. Does an individual control their own destiny? 4. What are the most significant insurmountable problems with reason as a way of understanding the world? 5. To what extent do the thinkers weve studied concur that the human mind is rational? 6. What is truth? 7. Do any of the approaches you have encountered give real voice to the oppressed or the marginal, or do they just fte oppression and marginality? 8. Can we ever take anything that anyone says or writes at face value?

Resits
In the unlikely event that you fail the course, you will be required to submit two essays on different topics from the one you have already tried (the other essay replaces the portfolio). Pick two alternative questions, and write an essay of 2,500 words on each for the August re-assessment deadline. Make sure you specify at the top of your resit essay the question you originally attempted.

Ten Habits of First Class Students

Over the years, there are things Ive noticed that some students do, that other students dont. This is completely unscientific. The students that do these things tend to see their marks on an upward trajectory. Do most of these, and your grades will improve. The rest will fit into place if you do. 1. Show up. The world belongs to those that turn up. 2. Read a newspaper. That means The Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Independent or the Financial Times. Paper versions only count. If its free, and not worth leaving your room for, it isnt really worth having. The news actually starts on page 4. Otherwise you will always appear ignorant or isolated to credible intellectuals. 3. Do stuff that isnt academic. Write for a newspaper, campaign for a political party, mentor children, run club nights, act in a play, join the hockey club. This gets you good jobs too whether you want to save the world from poverty, or become the most grasping hedge fund manager, a degree alone is not enough to succeed. 4. Read work out loud. Very, very slowly. More slowly than Huw Edwards, notoriously slow BBC news presenter. The really successful ones get their friends to read it out loud very slowly to them. It shows more than anything else where youre writing junk English, boring your reader, waffling or talking nonsense. S l o w l y so slowly it hurts.

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5. Look at the edges. Most people are so focused on the text, they ignore diversions like tables of contents, footnotes and bibliographies. Want to look like an adventurous genius to your lecturer? Follow the diversions they offer. 6. Go to office hours. With essay plans, questions, goals, queries, ponderings etc. These could be office hours of your personal tutors, or others in your own subject area that you have got on with. Dont pester with emails if its important enough, just turn up for a quick chat. 7. Read without taking notes. Just jot down at the end of each chapter what was important or interesting about what youve just read. Youll remember it better that way, despite what you might think. If you didnt remember it at the end of the chapter, it really probably wasnt that important. Reading to understand cannot be done at the same time as writing. Anyhow, youre not expected to know everything. 8. Move beyond Oxford Road. There is more to Manchester than the 100 yds either side of Oxford Road. Life in the student bubble is pretty restricting. 9. Read random stuff. Ever wondered what its like to be black, gay, a soldier, Afghan, in love? Read novels. Ever wondered what a black hole is? Why banks collapse? Read popular factual books. Itll help you find out. Can you explain why theres a bank liquidity crisis? Can you be a credible intellectual if you cant? 10. Cant think of a tenth

General reading
The following are particularly recommended. There are multiple copies of all these books in the library. You do not need to buy any of them. Magee, Bryan, The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (London, 1987). Russell, Bertrand. The History of Western Philosophy. Any edition. Jostein Gaarder, Sophies World (London, 1995). 1p on Amazon. Its a novel, so introduces you to all this stuff painlessly You may not reference this in your writing, though! Stamford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html good online summaries of many of the thinkers were studying, by leading scholars in the field. Very Short Introductions Important: Some of these books were previously published in the past masters series, and so you might find them with similar names, but different editions. Julia Annas Plato: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003) Beth, Williamson, Christian Art. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2004) Kerr, Aquinas: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2009) John Riches, The Bible: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000). Marshall, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2009) Roger Scruton, Kant: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001) Margaret Walters, Feminism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005)

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Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000) Anthony Storr, Freud: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001) Gary Gutting, Foucault: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005) Robert Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003).

2. Theme: Truth and Reality.

Text: Platos Republic, Allegory of the Cave. Specified text/image Key issues for the lecture Plato, The Republic (London, 1987). The metaphor of the sun (507b509c) and the analogy of the divided line (509d 513e) at the end of Book 6. The allegory of the cave at the beginning of Book 7 (514a520a). The lecture will treat the various contexts within which the texts above have to be viewed: a) a brief overview of Platos life b) the political situation in Athens at the time c) The Republic as the text from which the above have been taken and its governing question What is Justice. Then we will examine more closely Platos theory of the forms as it is developed in the three illustrations, paying attention to their order. From this questions will arise concerning the nature of the Good, the True and the Just. Finally, attention will be drawn to the ambiguities of the illustrations that open up a more critical stance to Platos position. Julia Annas, Plato: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003) Julia Annas, Introduction to Platos Republic (Oxford, 1981) chapter 10 Richard Kraut (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge, 1993), introduction. Electronic book. GR Ferrari, The Cambridge Companion to Platos Republic (Cambridge, 2003), chs. 1, 2, 11, 12. . Electronic book. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/ Julia Annas, Introduction to Platos Republic (Oxford, 1981) chapters 8 and 9 9 copies available in High Demand Richard Kraut, Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge, 1992) - chapter 9 Platos Metaphysical Epistemology by Nicholas P. White (CUP) Jennifer Gurley, Platonic Paideia, Philosophy and Literature, 2 (1999), 351-377. What were the big ideas that the thinker raised that seemed really important or challenging? How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What really mattered to them about this weeks thinker? 1) What bothers Plato about the ways that people claim to understand the world? Gather information about it? Process 12

Backgroun d books/artic les

Detailed analytical texts

Questions, themes or topics for discussion in seminar

2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

that information? What do you think Plato means by the Good beyond Being in the metaphor of the sun? What is the relationship between the visible and the invisible worlds in the analogy of the line? Does the allegory of the cave gather up the analyses of the sun metaphor and the line analogy and re-present them, or is the allegory doing something else entirely? Would the philosopher make the best king? Can we detect reality in the world? Echoes of reality? No reality?

3. Theme: Disputes, Reason, Faith and Methods.

Text: Aquinas Specified text/image Key issues for the lecture Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, prima pars, q. 1 a. 1-2 and q. 2 a. 1-3, taken from God and Creation. St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. and with an introduction by William P. Baumgarth and Richard J. Regan (Scranton, NJ, 1994), pp. 35-44. [.pdf] Around the turn of the twelfth century, new institutions of higher education began to appear. Contemporaries called them universities. They taught the liberal arts, canon and civil law, and theology. A new, analytical method of formulating arguments was developed, replicating the dialectic of the lecture-hall debate at the schools. We call this scholasticism, and this marks the origins of how we produce knowledge they called it, disputation. These university academics sought to understand the foundations of their Christian faith by approaching it using the scholastic methodology. This involved a great process of reconciliation: the attempt to reconcile theology with philosophy; the two great sources of authority with one another the Bible (and the Christian tradition of theology) with the newlyrediscovered Aristotle (and the ancient Greek tradition of natural philosophy); and ultimately, faith with reason. The Parisian academic Thomas Aquinas produced the most remarkable and influential attempt to understand the Christian faith systematically through the application of natural reason to do theology philosophically in his great textbook, the Summa theologiae. He begins with the two most fundamental questions. First: is faith necessary, or natural reason sufficient? Second, does God exist? More to the point: can we prove that by reason alone? Backgroun Colish, Marcia L., Medieval Foundations of the Western d Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400 (New Haven, CT, and books/artic London, 1997), pp. 265-301. [.pdf] 13

les

Detailed analytical texts

Questions, themes or topics for discussion in seminar

Haren, Michael, Medieval Thought. The Western Intellectual Tradition from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century (Basingstoke and London, 21992), ch. 6 (Aristotelian Philosophy and Christian Theology System Building and Controversy), pp. 161-206. [.pdf] McGrade, A. S., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 2003). [e-book] ch. 1: Steven P. Marrone, Medieval Philosophy in Context. ch. 6: Stephen P. Menn, Metaphysics. God and Being. Kretzmann, Norman, and Eleonore Stump, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge, 1993). [e-book] ch. 1: Jan A. Aertsen, Aquinas Philosophy in its Historical Setting. ch. 2: Joseph Owens, Aristotle and Aquinas. ch. 9: Mark D. Jordan, Theology and Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas-moral-political/ Davies, Brian, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford, 1992), ch. 2 (Getting to God), pp. 21-39. [.pdf] Owens, Joseph, Aquinas and the Five Ways, in John R. Catan, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God. Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R (Albany, NY, 1980), pp. 132-41. [.pdf] Sillem, Edward, Ways of Thinking about God. Thomas Aquinas and some Recent Problems (London, 1961), ch. 6 (Further Considerations on the Theological Setting of the Five Ways), pp. 79-109. [.pdf] Velde, Rudi te, Aquinas on God. The Divine Science of the Summa Theologiae (Aldershot, 2006), ch. 2 (The First Thing to Know: Does God Exist? On the Five Ways), pp. 3763. [.pdf] Velde, R. A. te, The First Thing to Know about God: Kretzmann and Aquinas on the Meaning and Necessity of Arguments for the Existence of God, Religious Studies 39 (2003), 25167. [e-journal] What were the big ideas that the thinker raised that seemed really important or challenging? How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What really mattered to them about this weeks thinker? 1. What methods does Aquinas use to get to knowledge? How familiar do they seem to you? 2. What role does Aquinas accord to faith? What is it for? What does it do? 3. Why does Aquinas think that faith is necessary, and that it is not possible ultimately to know everything by natural reason alone? 4. What is the argumentative basis for Aquinas five proofs of the existence of God (the quinque viae, or Five Ways)? 14

5. Why does Aquinas consider it important to prove the existence of God by reason? Why does reason matter? Why does he bother with it? 6. Are faith and reason mutually exclusive?

4. Theme: Faith, Progress and Reason.

Key text: Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?. Specified Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What is text/image Enlightenment, 1784 in Hyland et al (eds), The Enlightenment: A Sourcebook and Reader (London, 2003), 53-58. Key issues The aim of this lecture is to read one of Kants most famous for the popular essays and to engage with the ethical principles of the lecture Enlightenment period. In the lecture a brief overview of Kants philosophy in its historical context will be given and different types of Enlightenment (Scottish, French etc.) will be introduced. We will explore how Kant challenged humanity to define what knowledge was, and what it was for. Michael Losonsky, Enlightenment and Action from Descartes to Backgroun Kant (Cambridge, 2001): Ch. 1 The Enlightened Mind d electronic resource. books/artic Roger Scruton, Kant: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001) les The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, 1992) electronic book; introduction, plus chapters 2, 5, 11, 18 Robert Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self (Oxford, 1988). Chapter on Kant/ Enlightenment. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/ Detailed Michael Clarke, Kants Rhetoric of Enlightenment, Review of analytical Politics 1 (1997), 53-73. texts Arthur Strum, What Enlightenment Is, New German Critique 79 (2000), 106-136. James Schmidt, The Question of Enlightenment: Kant, Mendelssohn and the Mittwochsgesellschaft, Journal of the History of Ideas 2 (1989), 269-291. -- What Enlightenment Project?, Political Theory 6 (2000), 734-757. Chad Wellmon, Kant and the Feelings of Reason, Eighteenth Century Studies 4 (2009), 557-580. Questions, What were the big ideas that the thinker raised that themes or seemed really important or challenging? topics for How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What really discussion mattered to them about this weeks thinker? in seminar 1. What is Enlightenment? Are there any problems with the way Kant defined it? Used it? 2. Is Enlightenment just another way of saying free speech? 15

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Reason? Evidence? Or is it something more than that? How does the Enlightenment transform the status/prestige of the unique individual? And how does it limit what the individual can do/say? What is the difference between private and public use of reason? Why does Kant think that we want to remain immature? Should there be restrictions to free speech? What can restrain the Enlightened individual from immoral acts? Does Enlightenment mean getting rid of society? Morality? Tradition?

5. Theme: Grace, Salvation and the English Language.

Text: The Gospel According to St. Matthew, King James Version. Specified text/image Key issues for the lecture The Gospel according to St Matthew, KJV, Chapters 5-8, then chapters 10: 16-41, 13, 18. Jesus was one of the most radical social and political thinkers ever to be discussed in Europe, and His ideas have shaped every aspect of European culture right up to the present. In particular, it is sometimes difficult for contemporary readers to grasp Jesus surprising radicalism, so closely (and wrongly) do we equate religion with conservatism. Yet Jesus ideas, here expressed in His Sermon on the Mount and some other sermons, challenge every preconception we might have about Him.

When his ideas were translated into peoples everyday languages in the 15th and 16th centuries, this coincided with a change in media technology (the introduction of printing), and together they destabilised the whole of European culture and politics, and transformed the ways people thought about institutions, money, the state, God and above all, themselves. Vernacular Bibles, transmitted through printing, led people to claim they had a direct and personal relationship to God revealed through scripture. Europe was plunged into a century of war and cultural crisis and the idea of the unique individual human with special rights and privileges was born. Backgroun John Riches, The Bible: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000). d Marshall, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, books/artic 2009) les Jaroslav Pelikan, The Reformation of the Bible/The Bible of the Reformation (London, 1996) McGrath, Alistair. Reformation Thought: An Introduction (3rd Edn., Oxford, 1999) Chapters 1, 6, 8, 14 electronic book David Bagchi et al The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology (Cambridge, 2004), esp. Introduction, ch. 12, ch 13, ch 15 electronic book Detailed David Weil Baker, The Historical Faith of William Tyndale: Nonanalytical Salvific Reading of Scripture at the Outset of the English 16

texts

Questions, themes or topics for discussion in seminar

Reformation, Renaissance Quarterly 3 (2009), 661-692. Andrew Pettegree, Matthew Hall, The Reformation and the Book: A reconsideration, The Historical Journal 4 (2004), 785808. Alexandra Walsham, Unclasping the Book? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the Vernacular Bible, The Journal of British Studies 2 (2003), 141-166. Timothy Rosendale, Fiery Tongues? Language, Liturgy and the Paradox of the English Reformation, Renaissance Quarterly 1 (2001), 1142-1164. David Ginsburg, Ploughboys versus Prelates: Tyndale and More and the Politics of Bible Translation, Sixteenth Century Journal 1 (1988), 45-61. What were the big ideas that the thinker raised that seemed really important or challenging? How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What really mattered to them about this weeks thinker? 1.How surprised are you at what youve read here? What is this Jesus like? Whether you believe in Him or not, how would you characterise the impact of what Hes saying? 2.What is the significance of the Bible being translated into vernacular? Why is it important to be able to understand it oneself? Is this the case in all religions? What effects does it have on religious institutions? 3.What are Jesus theories of salvation? Are they coherent? 4.What is the significance of parable teaching? By teaching in metaphors and stories, rather than rules straight from God, what role does Jesus give to the listener in finding truth? 5.What are the key elements of Jesus view of religion as expounded in the Sermon on the Mount, and the other teachings you have read? Do you detect revolutionary potential in them? 6.How does Jesus understand the individual in these texts? What qualities does s/he have? What responsibilities does s/he have, and to whom? 7. How did people use Jesus ideas when they got hold of them in their own language? How did they change peoples ideas of themselves, and of authority?

6. Theme: Men and Women.

Key text: Extracts from Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Specified Mary Wollstonecraft, excerpts from A Vindication of the Rights of text/image Women (1792); from The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, vol. 4: The Age of Romanticism, ed. Joseph Black et al. (Broadview Press, 2006), pp. 70-90. Key issues Published in 1794 in response to the recent French Revolution for the and its avowed aims of political liberty and equal human and civil lecture rights for every person, Mary Wollstonecrafts Vindication of the 17

Rights of Women called for a Revolution in female manners and the abolition of all forms of discrimination or unequal treatment on the basis of sex. Beyond her insistence on the political rights of women to vote, to own property, and to work in all the traditionally male-dominated professions (including law, politics, medicine, education, and business), Wollstonecraft challenged prevailing characterisations of women as innately irrational, emotional, submissive, superficial and weak. Instead, she argued that such traits were inculcated in women by a system of education that denied their rationality and induced them to think of themselves as subordinate to men, whom it was their duty to please and obey. Wollstonecraft was thus among the first social critics and thinkers to describe what we would now call gender as a social construct: that is, as a product of social training and ideology rather than the product of innate natural differences between males and females. Backgroun Claudia L. Johnson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mary d Wollstonecraft (Cambridge, 2002), esp. Introduction, books/artic Chapter 3 (Mary Wollstonecraft and Education, Chapter 4 les (Mary Wollstonecrafts Vindications and their political tradition, by Chris Jones), Chapter 9 (Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the women writers of her day, by Anne K. Mellor), Chap 14 (Reception and Legacies) Electronic book Margaret Walters, Feminism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005) Ferguson, Moira, and Janet Todd, Mary Wollstonecraft (Twayne, 1984) Stamford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wollstonecraft/ Detailed Catriona McKenzie, Reason and Sensibility: The Idea of Womens analytical Self-Governance in the Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, texts Hypatia 4 (1993), 35-55. Eileen Hunt, The Family as Cave, Platoon and Prison: The Three Stages of Wollstonecraft's Philosophy of the Family, Review of Politics 1 (2002), 81-119. Mary Poovey, Mans Discourse, Womans Heart: Mary Wollstonecrafts Two Vindications, from The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer, chapter 2 (Chicago, 1984), pp. 4881. Susan Ferguson, The Radical Ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft, Canadian Review of Political Science 3 (1999), 427-450. Questions, What were the big ideas that the thinker raised that themes or seemed really important or challenging? topics for How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What really discussion mattered to them about this weeks thinker? 18

in seminar

1. From your reading of MW, is one born a woman, or does one become a woman? Is it a question of sex (fixed) or gender (constructed)? 2. What does Wollstonecraft contend should be the aims of education? What are the consequences of the educational system in place in Wollstonecrafts day, as she describes it? Are any elements of this system still evident today? 3. Are there any negative effects of the educational system for men, according to Wollstonecraft? 4. How does Wollstonecraft respond to Rousseaus argument that male superiority is derived from nature? 5. What, according to Wollstonecraft, should be the role of romantic and/or sexual love in the lives of women (and men)? 6. What are the implications of Wollstonecrafts argument in terms of social class?

7. Theme: Society and the Human Will

Key text: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. Specified text/image Key issues for the lecture Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto with Related Documents, ed. by John Toews (New York, 1999), pp. 65-83. This lecture explores the idea that individuals are not the agents of their own destiny: they are dominated by historically specific codes, economic systems and beliefs which rob them of autonomy. Moreover, these codes and systems and beliefs are so complex and pervasive throughout our cultural, social and economic lives that we do not even recognise their presence. We are unwitting slaves of a system with no author or architect or so it is claimed.

Marx and Engels were the first to offer a comprehensive explanation of this system. By claiming to see through the dominant ideologies and systems (which they argued were froth on the surface of things), they suggested we could explore underlying reality and avoid the distortions which superficial analysis supposedly produces. This idea that one can penetrate the surface of the appearance of the world and analyse the underlying dominant and subservient social forces which are the true shapers of human experience has profoundly influenced all the subjects in the School, many of which pride themselves on being able to see through the surface to the underlying reality or structure. Backgroun John Toews, Introduction to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The d Communist Manifesto with Related Documents, ed. by John books/artic Toews (New York, 1999). les Terrel Farrow, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 1 (Marxs own life), ch. 5, 11 Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000). 19

Detailed analytical texts

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Karl Marx at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/. Mark Cowling (ed.), The Communist Manifesto: New Interpretations (Edinburgh, 1998), essays 1, 2, 3 all very short. Terry Eagleton, What is Ideology?, 10 copies in the SLC Photocopies collection at 999/E246, also available through the
JRUL website.

Questions, themes or topics for discussion in seminar

A. Kiarina Kordela, Marxs Update of Cultural Theory, Cultural Critique 65 (2007), 43-66. Nicholas Abercrombie et al, The Dominant Ideology Thesis, British Journal of Sociology 2 (1978), 149-70. Stephen Rigby, Marxism and History: A Critical Introduction (2nd Edn., Manchester, 1998), ch. 12: The Idealistic Superstructure (multiple copies on short loan/ e-copy on library website). What were the big ideas that the thinker raised that seemed really important or challenging? How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What really mattered to them about this weeks thinker? 1. Marx and Engels identify two main classes, and a sub-class of each. What are they, and what are their characteristics? Where do you think you are in this class structure? Why? What about your lecturers/tutors? Where are they? Why? 2. Are these classes conscious of who they are? Of their relationships to one another, to themselves? Why (not)? What produces ignorance/ awareness? 3. What mechanisms keep the poor in poverty? Is there a potential to escape it for the determined individual? Why (not)? 4. Do M&E offer a hope for salvation? What is the means of that hope? How will it come? 5. On pp. 81-2, M&E discuss structures like the family, marriage, nation and education. How are they characterised? What is their function? Do you agree? 6. What role does history and time play in this model of the world? How do time and class fix people in their relationships? Could you transcend your time? 7. Is there any room in this for the individual human to shape his/her own destiny? How? Where? Why/why not?

8. Theme: Consciousness and Unconsciousness

Specified text/image Key issues for the lecture Excerpts from New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, and The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Freud started writing in a challenging and innovative way about the human mind. Instead of viewing it as calm or rational or in need of reform or salvation from some external source, he saw it as a profound and 20

elaborate architecture, in which one part may well be in conflict with or unaware of another. Rather than clear and orderly, it was a structure of dark spaces and unknown depths. This messy psychic architecture has opened up a series of spaces for debate and interpretation about the origins and product of human culture. Yet Freud considered himself not to be an interpreter of empty spaces or invisible depths, but to be presenting scientific facts on a par with Darwin and Einstein. This theory of the mind also invites us to consider: what is the human mind like? How might we know? Just who exactly is entitled to interpret its outputs? And can the interpreted reject these interpretations? Backgroun Jerome Neu, The Cambridge Companion to Freud (Cambridge, d 1992), intro + chs. 1, 4, 5, 10 - electronic book books/artic Robert Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise les and Fall of the Self (Oxford, 1988). Ch. 10 Anthony Storr, Freud: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001) Paul Roazen. Freud and his followers, in Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy (eds), The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge, 2003), 392-411 [E book]. Detailed Grant Gillett, Consciousness and Lesser States: The Evolutionary analytical Foothills of the Mind, Philosophy 289 (1999), 331-360. texts Howard Kaye, Was Freud a Medical Scientist or a Social Theorist? The Mysterious Development of the Hero, Sociological Theory 4 (2003), 375-397. Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok, Questions to Freudian Psychoanalysis: Dream Interpretation, Reality, Fantasy, Critical Inquiry 3 (1993), 567-594. Tracy Strong. Psychoanalysis as a vocation: Freud, politics and the heroic, Political Theory 12 (1984), 51-79. Jerome Neu, The Cambridge Companion to Freud (Cambridge, 1992), intro + chs. 1, 4, 5, 10 - electronic book read intro plus one chapter for a reading report. Questions, What were the big ideas that the thinker raised that themes or seemed really important or challenging? topics for How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What really discussion mattered to them about this weeks thinker? in seminar 1. Is the mind orderly, or disorderly? Peaceful, or riotous? Rational, or irrational? 2. Are there any systems which structure the mind? What are the ego (I), superego (the more-than I) and the id (the it-force)? 3. What are conscious, unconscious, and subconscious thoughts? What/who decides which thought gets boxed up in which part of the mind? 4. What right do we have to interpret the world? When do symbols mean something else other than their obvious 21

content? How are we entitled to say this? When is a cigar just a cigar? 5. Does everyone have the right/ability to interpret? Or does it belong to an elite class of experts? 6. Are sex, and the repression of sex, the engines of experience?

Key text: Extracts from Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. Specified Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I (London, 1990 text/image [Paris, 1976]), pp.30-35, 92-102. Key issues Foucault was one of a wide range of thinkers in France in the for the mid-twentieth century who were concerned about the dominance lecture of Marxist social science for understanding the world. Marxist approaches were useful, they felt, but too rigid. They offered only two social groups; they removed individual agency. He began to question the facts on which social scientists based their arguments, and proposed that people especially experts carefully select their facts to suit their perspective of the world, and make themselves powerful, rich and respectable. Instead of believing that the truth about people and society is out there, and that we could just go out and gather it, like a schoolboy gathers conkers from the ground, he proposed that people (from the government-appointed expert to the illiterate peasant) are embedded in networks of beliefs, convictions, attitudes, fancies, whims, habits and desires. He called these networks discourses, and claimed that uniquely in the modern world discourses rely on knowledge, and that knowledge is the foundation of power. He suggested that understanding discourses would revolutionise the way we see the world. Firstly, he thought it would show up the self-serving and biased nature of rational knowledge, showing that collecting knowledge was usually a cover activity for making one person powerful and clever, and another person seem helpless and stupid. Second, it made understanding society complicated: instead of simple binaries like the white oppressing the black, the rich oppressing the poor, the male oppressing the female, everyone was embedded in a complex, unstable network of oppression and liberation, in which local circumstances mattered more than big systems. There were no global good guys and bad guys. Finally, what really matters for understanding humans is not hard facts, but an awareness of the beliefs and assumptions which govern individuals lives as revealed by language, symbols and culture. Gary Gutting, Foucault: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005). Philip Barker, Michel Foucault: An Introduction (Edinburgh, 1998). 22

9. Theme: Culture and Society

Backgroun d

books/artic Christopher Butler, Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction les (Oxford, 2002) Gary Gutting, The Cambridge Companion to Foucault 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 2005), introduction + 4 electronic book Stamford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/ Detailed Trevor Purvis and Alan Hunt, Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, analytical Ideology, Discourse, Ideology, The British Journal of texts Sociology 3 (1993), 473-499. Larry Shiner, Reading Foucault: Anti-Method and the Genealogy of Power-Knowledge, History and Theory 3 (1982), 382298. Didier Eribon, Michel Foucaults Histories of Sexuality, Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (2001), 31-86 (you may read only intro, and pp. 42-61 if you wish). Kendall Philips, Rhetorical Maneuvers: Subjectivity, Power, Resistance, Philosophy and Rhetoric 4 (2006), 310-332. Brent Pickett, Foucault and the Politics of Resistance, Polity 4 (1996), 445-466. Bradley McDonald, Marx, Foucault, Genealogy, Polity 3 (2002), 259-284. Questions, What were the big ideas that the thinker raised that themes or seemed really important or challenging? topics for How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What really discussion mattered to them about this weeks thinker? in seminar 1. What is a discourse? Can you name 5 formal high-status discourses? (example: psychiatry) And 5 informal, lowstatus (but no-less-rigid) ones? (example: football punditry) 2. How and why do people become the objects of expert discourse? With what effect for the people, for the experts, for the discourse? (pp. 30-35) 3. What is power? What is it not? (Hes fairly explicit) Where is it? (pp. 92-96) 4. What role does resistance play in power? (95-6) 5. Once a discourse exists, he offers four rules for understanding it. Can you sum them up in less than two lines each? 6. Does this mean that nothing is real? There are no facts? That everything is relative?

10. Theme: Coloniality and Post-Coloniality

Key text: Extracts from Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. Specified Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance text/image Farrington, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), pp. 187-99. Key issues This lecture examines how the power of colonising forces eroded for the and devalued the local and traditional values of colonised lecture peoples. It will go on, through the work of Fanon, to give an example of how colonised peoples had to re-invent and construct a specific idea of who they were and what their cultural history 23

was: in order words, to construct an ethnic identity. We will look at, for example, how the arts (literature, music, crafts) participate in the expression and revival of all national cultures (including all cultures in the West) and in the production of ethnicity and ethnic identity. Through the work of Fanon, we will see how it is possible to begin to view ethnicity not as something essential (that we or others have or fundamentally are) but as something that we construct when we need to differentiate ourselves from others or when we want to give value to a set of cultural experiences that we understand as our own and devalue a set of cultural experiences that belong to someone else. Viewed like this, all ethnic identities come to seem like tools so who makes them? Why? What for? Backgroun Robert Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, d 2003). books/artic Halford Fairchild, Frantz Fanons The Wretched of the Earth in les Contemporary Perspective, Journal of Black Studies, 2 ( 1994), 191-199. Anthony Alessandrini (ed.), Frantz Fanon, Critical Perspectives, (London, 1999) Neil Lazarus, The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies (Cambridge, 2004), introduction + 3, 10 electronic book. Nigel C. Gibson, Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (Cambridge, 2003) any one of chs. 1-4. Azzedine Haddour (ed.), The Fanon Reader (London, 2006) Detailed Paul Nursey-Bray, Race and Nation: Ideology in the Thought of analytical Frantz Fanon, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 18:1 texts (1980), 135-142. Michael Stoneleitner, Of Logic and Liberation: Frantz Fanon on Terrorism, Journal of Black Studies, 17:3 ( 1987), pp. 287304. Michael Lackey, Frantz Fanon on the Theology of Colonization, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 2 (2002), online journal. Gautam Premnath, Remembering Fanon, Decolonizing Diaspora in, Laura Prisman et al, Postcolonial Theory and Criticism (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 57-74. Dianna Fuss, Interior Colonies: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Identification, Diacritics 2/3 (1994), 19-42. T. Owens More, A Fanonian Perspective on Double Consciousness, Journal of Black Studies 6 (2005), 751-762. Questions, What were the big ideas that the thinker raised that themes or seemed really important or challenging? topics for How did the scholar you read use these ideas? What really discussion mattered to them about this weeks thinker? in seminar 1. What are some of the effects of colonial domination on the culture and society of the colonised? Of the internal mental 24

2.

3. 4. 5.

life of the colonised? How are these effects produced? Expressed? How about on the culture and society of the colonisers? Are they left untouched by the experience? What do we understand by ethnicity? Is one born white? Or does one become white? How? Why? Small children can see that different people are different colours but do they see that they are different people because they are different colours, or do they learn this? What does it mean to talk about revolutionary culture? Whats the difference between that, and revolutionary politics? What role does culture play in revolt and resistance? How was freedom conceptualised by Fanon in the context of colonisation? How does a culture hold on to its traditions in the context of oppression?

11. How to Write the Essay to Get the Mark You Want
This is the lecture to miss if youre so busy trying to get a 54% that you dont have time to turn up to learn how to get 65%+. But if you actually want to discover what lecturers are looking for in more or less all your lectures, this is the one to go for!

12. No lecture essay and portfolio deadlines.

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