GPHI 6614 -

Institution:

The New School

Subject:

Description:

Philosophical Anthropology and the Problem of Potentiality Spring 2009. Three credits. Dirk Setton Part of the problem of philosophical anthropology ("What is a human being ") is the problem of the specificity of human faculties, i.e. the question of what it means for a rational being to "have" a potentiality. In contemporaryphilosophy, this question has gained a new and quite controversial actuality. On the one hand, metaphysical approaches in post-analytical philosophy (McDowell, Michael Thompson) maintain a neo-Aristotelian notion of rational faculties that culminates in the idea of virtue. In focusing on the (practical) rationality of the human life form, potentiality appears to this line of reasoning in the form of a unified, unambiguous, and transparent self-consciousness. On the other hand, however, some strands in contemporary ontological theory (Deleuze, Agamben) center on a concept of potentiality that decisively breaks with this Aristotelian framework. By way of highlighting notions of virtuality or impotentiality, they rather focus either on the peculiar human mode of having a potentiality, or on the inner structure of "the virtual" and its specific kind of actualization. The seminar courseaims at both understanding and discussing this constellation by situating it in the philosophical tradition: Readings of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Leibniz'"Monadology," and Heidegger ? Being and Ti me shall therefore make up thbackground for such a discussion.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.newschool.edu

Phone Number:

(212) 229-5600

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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