GPHI 6620 -

Institution:

The New School

Subject:

Description:

The Notion of Life in German Idealism Spring 2009. Three credits. Thomas Khurana It is a widely shared assumption in the history of science, especially prominent since Michel Foucault's Les mots et les choses, that around 1800 a new concept of life emerges serving as the condition of possibility of modern biology. New modern notions of life have taken shape, however, not only in protobiological discourses. Simultaneously, complex notions of life were formed in the philosophical discourses of the time, especially in the various forms of German Idealism following Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminar pursues (i) the way in which living objects and their possible recognizability are conceptualized in this line of thought, and (ii) the way in which the mind itself appears to have the structure or mode of a living process. As exposed in these discourses, life seems to be the very process and mode of being that a mind can encounter in the outer world that comes closest to its own structure, an "analog of freedom in nature" (Fichte). The seminar investigates how thedeployment of this idea, especially in the writings of G.W.F. Hegel, might lead to a non-reductionist concept of life and a living concept of mind.

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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