GERM 316 Heidegger and the Ecstasy of Being
This course will be centered around an in-depth investigation of one of the most controversial and influential philosophers of the 20th Century, Martin Heidegger. Rejecting what he saw as the tradition of western metaphysics and its quest for absolute knowledge, Heidegger's phenomenological approach focused on an analysis of lived experience and the structures that make that experience possible. Fundamental to this analysis are the ideas of finitude and fallibility. Human beings, for Heidegger, are never closed and completed, secure in their knowledge and understanding of themselves, but beings who are fundamentally concerned with their own being, who seek to determine themselves from within the complex social, historical, and interpersonal contexts into which they were thrown. As such, philosophy, for Heidegger, becomes interpretation, the attempt to interpret and reinterpret oneself and one's place within a changing and complex world, always with the possibility of failure. The course will investigate this project of "existential hermeneutics" through an in-depth investigation of some of Heidegger's major writings. The first half of the course will focus on a close reading of the first half of Being and Time while in the second half we will look at Heidegger's post war essays, his turn to "poetic thinking" and the legacy of Heidegger's thought on 20th century Continental philosophy. We will investigate Heidegger's works from out of their historical context, including Heidegger's relation to National Socialism.
In addition to the English section, this course will meet for an additional session per week to read the texts in their original German and discuss the nuance and difference in meaning as it is transmitted through the original language. Reading the text in the original German is particularly important in the case of Heidegger, whose philosophical program cannot be separated from his thinking about language and the intricate relationship between language and meaning.
A completed final paper for this course with a mark of C or higher can also serve to fulfill the Second-Stage Writing Requirement.