English 6340: Metacritical Theory -Heidegger Instructor: Luanne Frank
Spring, 2000 Office: 522 Carlisle
Phones: 478-7794/ 272-2692
Office hours: T 8:50 & by appt.


TEXTS

Being and Time (BT) [1926]. Tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper, 1962.

Introduction to Metaphysics [1935]. Tr. Ralph Manheim. New Haven: Yale UP, 1959.

Parmenides [1952-54; 1st German ed., 1982]. Tr. Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992.

Plato's Sophist [1924-25; German ed., 1992]. Tr. Andre Shuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997.

Poetry, Language, Thought. San Francisco: Harper, 1991. (Optional.)

What is Called Thinking? [1952-52]. San Francisco: Harper, 1971.

READINGS AND PAPERS; TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

January 18 BT : Introduction I & II.
January 25 BT : Division One, Chs. 1-4.
February 1 BT : Division One, Chs. 5-6
February 8 Paper #1.
February 15 BT : Division Two, Intro., & Chs. 2-3.
February 22 BT : Division Two, Ch. 4
February 29 Paper #2.
March 1 Introduction to Metaphysics
March 8 What is Called Thinking ?
March 15 Paper #3.
March 22 Parmenides 1-58.
March 29 Parmenides 58-110.
April 4 Parmenides 110-158.
April 11 Paper #4
April 18 Plato's Sophist 1-129
April 25 Plato's Sophist 131-286
May 2 Plato's Sophist 287-422
TBA Paper #5


Texts not read this semester: Basic Problems of Phenomenology; Early Greek Thinking; Nietzsche, vols 1 & 2; On the Way to Language; On Time and Being; Poetry, Language, Thought; Schellings Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom; Heraclitus Seminar. Possible addition or substitution: Zollikon Seminars

THUMBNAIL SKETCH OF COURSE

Description:
         The present course reads a selection of the best- and least-known, and most influential and potentially-influential works of twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger, extending from the beginning to the end of his long career of thought. It does so with a view to participating in this thought and determining its use-value to you, the student of human culture: literary theorist, philosopher, historian, anthropologist, psychologist, or other. This use-value will be explored by course participants in a series of one-page papers.
         Heidegger is almost beyond question contemporary humanistic thought's most influential philosopher: His cultural significance remains unsurpassed. This has largely to do with the fact that his thought grounds the late twentieth-century's most characteristic understandings of itself, those often called post-structuralist. Certainly his thought decisively informs such thinkers who come after him as Hans Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, to name a very few. Their thinking, now so indispensable, is illuminated and amplified by an acquaintance with his.
         Should you be venturing for the first time with this course into Being and Time, please know that Heidegger's style there - according to no less accomplished a reader than Harold Bloom - is forbidding, but that it also becomes accessible surprisingly swiftly.

Pattern of Action:
         Read assignment at home.
         Read assignment together with class.
         In one page (8 1/2 by 11 or 17, 10 pt min) summarize text and elucidate a literary work across it.
         Provide one copy for each class member and one for instructor.
         Present aloud to class.

Grades: Average of paper

Attendance: Required


Rhetoric Seminars
Rhetoric, Composition, Critical Theory HP & Program
The ENGLISH HOME PAGE
Luanne Frank's HP