UPF, 2015 Contemporary Political Philosophy
Prof: Marina Garcés
1. Introduction to modern critical thinking.
Main reference : “Critique”, Enciclopédie Française (french version, discussed during the seminary)
Main reading: Koselleck, Critique and crisis, “The process of criticism”
PART I
2. From Kant to Foucault
Main readings: Kant, “What is enlightenment?”
Foucault, “What is critique?”
Complementary reading: Kant, Preface A and B to Critique of pure reason
3. From Nietzsche to Deleuze
Main readings: Nietzsche (selection): “The three metamorphoses”, “The despisers of the body”,
“Old and new tables”,
Deleuze, Nietzsche and philosophy, 3rd part: “Critique”
Complementary reading: Nietzsche, “Preface” Genealogy of the morals
4. From Marx to contemporary emancipation
Main reading: Marx, Feuerbach Thesis
Raymond Williams, “Hegemony” and “Ideology”, in Keywords
Rancière, “The Aesthetic revolution and its outcomes”
Complementary reading: Rancière, Disagreement.
PART II
5. To embody critique. Around Judith Butler
Main reading: Butler, “Survivability, vulnerability, affect”, in Frames of War
6. Descentering human point of view. Around Dipesh Chakrabarty
Main reading: Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The human condition in the Antroposcene” (Tanner Lectures)
7. Critique and engagement
Main readings: Marina Garcés, Committment, CCCB;
Espai en Blanc and El Pressentiment materials
www.espaienblanc.net
www.elpressentiment.net
PART III (Sonia Arribas)
8. Freud, Marx and Critique
Main readings: Freud, “Beyond the pleasure principle” and “Group psychology and the Analysis of
the Ego”
Marx, “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof” in Capital. The Critique of
Political Economy, Vol. I.
9. Critical Theory and the Critique of Enlightenment
Main readings: Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory”
Adorno and Horkheimer, “The Concept of Enlightenment”, in Dialectic of Enlightenment
Complementary reading: Excursus I and II in DE
10. Benjamin: Critique of Violence and History
Main reading: Benjamin, “The Critique of Violence”
Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”
Complementary reading: Convolut N in The Arcades Project