Continental Philosophy

In Henri Bergson’s bestselling 1907 book Creative Evolution(Évolution créatricein French),Bergson attempts to make his theory of duration speak to evolutionary science. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution would seem to be diametrically opposed to what we have heard of Bergson to date. Evolution has space and environment emphasised over time, we see deep, long, quantified time emphasised over duration, and we see emphasis on external material determinants rather than inner purposiveness. Bergson though thinks that this basic Darwinian picture is somewhat lacking and needs to be supplemented with a philosophical theory. And that is what Creative Evolutionis, it is a philosophical theory which makes material evolution intelligible. Creative Evolutionitself then – and these are the themes I turn to in this lecture – offers a fortified theory of evolution, where what Bergson calls finalist and teleological forms of life are consolidated with a Bergson’s own theory of futural direction. As well, Bergson suggests evolution requires a theory of the unconditioned (free) emergence of organisms. And finally, Bergson wants to challenge our picture of evolutionary development. We typically take the development and change of matter to be ordered, quantitative and measured over time. Bergson thinks in doing so, we conceal the necessity of disorder and contingency for the emergence of life. Bergson’s idea is that, free, and unpredictable creativity is a necessary condition of evolutionary change. So, to be clear, Bergson on this own terms, is not repudiating evolutionary change he is perfecting it.

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In the last lecture I spoke about Bergson’s radical distinction between space and time, quality and quantity, duration, and extension. In another of Bergson’s major works Matter and MemoryBergson builds on the insights of his earlier work, this time in the context of memory. Now, when we think of memory, usually we consider it to be a psychological concept. It is a type of thinking located in the mind pertaining in some way to a retrieval of the past. Bergson thinks this is true, but only tells a very small part of the story. In fact, Bergson actually thinks that memory, and the way it works is indicative of something much deeper, broader, and metaphysically more interesting. So, Matter and Memoryoffers us an exploration of how the relationship between time, matter and memory unfolds. More specifically, Matter and Memoryoffers fresh and detailed descriptions of different types of memory. For example, Bergson talks about the function of body memory or habitual and muscle memory. As well, he talks of things like episodic memory, processual and memory-image. In this lecture, I aim to explain the ways Bergson’s account of memory maps onto his theory of duration. Doing so will allow me to explain how he conceives of the operation of memory, how Bergson thinks the mind relates to the body, and how conscious memory relate to unconscious bodily memory in the form of habit. But also, how the mind is always more than just mind!

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Henri Bergson is one of our most significant vitalist thinkers who from the late 1800s until his death in 1941 offers one of the most sophisticated modern versions of vitalism. His work is constructed as a reaction to variety of strains of rationalist thought as found in the likes of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Auguste Comte. In contrast, Bergson emphasizes themes of life, vitality, duration, creativity - themes which he developed in a collection of works famed for their prose style and his use of metaphor and imagery. Notably, Bergson would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. His work is famed for a recursive expression of life itself. His writings are not strictly representation of his themes, they are written to express what life itself is. We can find the common denominator of many themes of his work in his 1889 work Time and Free Will[Essai sur les donnes immédiates de la conscience – Essay on the Immediate Givens of Consciousness (roughly)]. In this lecture then I will explain the core themes of Time and Free Will. I will begin with a short biography of Bergson to give you a sense of the man. Subsequently, I will talk about the overall core themes of time and free will, Bergson’s famous distinctions between time and space, the qualitative and quantitative, his theory of duration and how that tells us about why the human being is fundamentally free.

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The reason Félix Ravaisson is worth studying is because in his work we find a confluence of themes from Aristotle, debates in 18th and 19th century French vitalism, or spiritualism as it was called then, and a foreshadowing of European Philosophy in the 20th century. His most well-known works of the time were on the history of philosophy, works such as Essay on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (1837), French Philosophy in the 19th Century (1867) and The Philosophy of Pascal(1887). His original philosophy can certainly be detected in these engagements with key figures in the history of philosophy, but his most significant work is found in the published doctoral thesis of 1838 Sur L'Habitude [Of Habit] and the long article Métaphysique et morale [1893- Metaphysics and Morals]. We will focus here on the essay Of Habit,taking up themes of being, time and space and the formation of habits as consequences of an active andpassive principle, or the double law of habit as Ravaisson calls it. 

Episode Image: Rémi Mathis, Public Domain.

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This podcast provides a short history of the philosophical theory of vitalism. Vitalism is a set of philosophical propositions claiming that matter is not foundational, that the material world cannot be described in reductive terms. Put positively, vitalism proposes the existence of principles not found in inorganic matter nor nature. Or if we think about it in biological terms, living things, that is living organisms, have vital forces that actively contribute to arranging any organism’s material constituents. I look at the roots of vitalism in Aristotle, how vitalism continued in the 18th and 19th century, the repudiation of vitalism by twentieth century biology, as well as the resurgence of vitalism in the 21st century in philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, Karen Barad and Jane Bennett.

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This week we talk about what Heidegger has to say about science. This is a useful topic to conclude with because the theme of science straddles both the earlier and later Heidegger. In Being and TimeHeidegger speaks about the nature of science as what he famously calls a ‘regional ontology’ which I will mention here. In his later work, Heidegger in such essays as “The Age of the World-Picture” and “Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics” Heidegger speaks about how, in contrast to the common view that technology and industry are applications of technology, science is inherently technological. In this lecture then I will explain this proposition, and I will explain what Heidegger means by ‘regional ontology,’ and what Heidegger has to say about the technological determination of reality which science unleashes. In his lectures What is Called ThinkingHeidegger puts forward, what he deems to a shocking and scandalous thought: ‘Science does not think.’ And it is rather shocking, why on earth would scientists not be able to think?

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This week we look at another of Heidegger’s preoccupations in his later philosophy: architecture and dwelling. While buildings, like the Greek Temple are present in Heidegger’s other work from the later period, he has only one short essay – “Building Dwelling Thinking” – which directly tackles the question of architecture. This essay was originally given as a lecture at a 1951 conference in Darmstadt, which was directly responding to the post-war housing crisis after WWII. It is an enigmatic essay, no doubt, and a good example of Heidegger’s late ocular prose style. But at its core there is quite a simple idea, we have forgotten how to dwell, or to live well with our abodes. We have started to think of homes as technological and instrumental rather than existential. In the following then I explain how Heidegger looks at how building has become separate form dwelling, what Heidegger means by the fourfold, and how Heidegger conceives of dwelling as spaces for living in.

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This week I want to explore Heidegger’s main points in his essay the "Question Concerning Technology." It is worth noting that while the essay is relatively short it can in parts be obscure. The essay devotes a lot of time to etymological exposition so as to unpack how or understanding of technology has changed throughout history. Heidegger’s primary argument is that modern technology, not technology per se, has done two things. Firstly, it obscures or makes us forget the question of Being. Secondly, modern technology also induces in humans a metaphysical transformation. This is to say it changes what we are. 

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This lecture I am going to explore one of Heidegger’s first major post-Being and Timeengagements. I want to look at what he has to say about the nature of art, it’s significance and what art can tell us about the mystery of Being. The first thing we should notice is Heidegger does do something quite radical in his treatment of art. In his essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger connects art to truth. Usually, in the history of Philosophy, for reasons I will go into, art is deemed to be the poor relation of Philosophy, presented as an obfuscation of what is real. Not so for Heidegger, who thinks that art and truth are inseparable. To understand, why this is the case will be my task this week. I aim to outline what Heidegger has to say about art “The Origin of the Work of Art,” explain how Heidegger positions himself in relation to some key moments in the history of the philosophy of art, and explain what Heidegger means by the idea that art is a form of truthful unconcealment.

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This week we examine the final chapters of Division Two of Being and Time. These last sections of Being and Timerepresent Heidegger’s effort to strengthen the concept of ecstatic temporality. From sections 72-83 Heidegger talks about the difference between history and historicality, an explanation of how ordinary time is dependent on existential-ontological time and the work concludes with a brief engagement with Hegel’s theory of time. In this lecture I want to focus on one element of these last sections, and that is the importance of history for Dasein.

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After last week’s exploration of death and demise, we get a shift in gears so to speak in sections 60-70. Here Heidegger confronts the question of temporality, the meaning of care and just what exactly is ‘anticipatory resoluteness.’ All of the concepts we have studied up to this point, present-to-hand and ready-to-hand, authenticity and inauthenticity, fear and anxiety, death and demise, truth, states-of-mind, care, are all reworked here as iterations of Dasein’sfundamental temporality. In overview, we can say these sections are important for two obvious reasons. Firstly, they round out the idea of authenticity implicit from the earliest pages of the work, and they do so through the idea of ‘anticipatory resoluteness,’ which is important for our understanding of Dasein. Secondly, they provide a full account of the temporal structure of Dasein, which is also very important. Some readings of Being and Time, especially those that focus on ‘world’ and present a pragmatic reading of the book, tend to pay little attention to Division Two and underplay the temporal analyses. This is a great shame, as in a sense they are the core of the whole book, or the point about which it turns, and in addition are highly original.

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In division two of Being and TimeHeidegger changes register somewhat. While Division One was focussed on average everydayness, and revolved around understanding Daseinas a practical, pragmatic being, in Division Two we see Heidegger offer an even more fundamental account of what constitutes the being of Dasein. In the opening sections of Division Two Heidegger engages two existential themes death and guilt, which will in turn reveal the importance of time. This engagement is necessary because it makes explicit the temporal horizons of Dasein and how meaningful possibilities may be projected. There is a sense that in Division 1 Heidegger concerned himself with more conventional questions of philosophy such as theory and practice, language, meaning, and the nature of subjectivity, in Division 2 we start to get a sense of how Heidegger is doing something startlingly original. So much so that that we will need to retroactively reconsider what occurred in Division One.[1] We begin where we left off in Division One, with Heidegger attending to the difference between an everyday and existential-ontological conception. The subject this time though is death.

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In the last lecture we discussed the different ways Daseinis ‘there’ and ‘with,’ and the ways states-of-minds (moods) disclose to Daseinit’s available possibility. We need to understand, however, how inauthentic modes, the they-self, idle talk, help make apparent how we are ontologically. Remember, authentic and inauthentic are ways of being of Dasein, not facts about Dasein. Dasein is inseparable from the facts of its life, but not reducible to them. As such, Dasein continually project into the world it inhabits. However, certain modes become apparent which disclose the ontological structure of Dasein.This week then, I want to look at some of these modes, so I will talk about what Heidegger has to say about idle talk, fear, anxiety and care.

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One of the things that Heidegger thinks characterises Dasein is its ‘withness.’ Prior to being a subject, or a self, Daseinis always with. You will very well ask with what? Well, as we saw in a general sense last week, Daseinis always with world. As Being and Timeprogresses Heidegger starts to ask what else is Daseinwith. One of the other things that Dasein iswith, is things in the world and also others, or as he calls it mitsein(being-with). Daseinasmitseinis always with others in certain ways. This week then I want to explain how Daseinis ‘in the world’ already ‘with others,’ and also how being-with-others can take the form of two types of impersonal being (the ‘they’), inauthenticity and authenticity. I say both are impersonal, because they characterise Dasein, not specific subjects. Although, more on this as I progress.

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I want to proceed with Heidegger’s preliminary sketch of how to interpret Daseinas a being-in-the-world. Firstly, I want to explain just what Heidegger means by being-in-the-world,secondly, I want to explain what he means by world.Finally, I will turn to Heidegger’s tool-analysis as one of the first core concepts of how  Heidegger explains Daseinin Being and Time. If we are to understand what it is to be human, then we need to understand that there is something essential about our tool use as we navigate the world.

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Last week we looked at some of the core elements of Husserl’s phenomenological method: natural attitude, bracketing (epoché), reduction and intentionality. The last concept, intentionality, was the one I said was of the most significance for Martin Heidegger. Intentionality, Husserl’s idea that all consciousness is consciousness of something, became for Heidegger an insight of the first importance. This was because Heidegger saw the ‘worldliness’ of thought, consciousness, as of the utmost significance. What philosophy really needs to do, is not to focus on subjects and objects, but to make sense of the human being’s place in the world, or our being-in-the-world. There is a reversal at stake here. In many ways, Heidegger’s masterwork Being and Timeis a 20th Century reflection on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.Heidegger is interested in understanding philosophy in a practical sense rather than a purely theoretically (theoria and phronesis). Although this distinction is never clear cut, for reasons we will go into, Heidegger wants to understand what the human being is,and to do this we need to tackle that question from the perspective of human’s practical everydayness. And this means we need to ask ourselves what he means by the term ‘Being.’

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To understand Husserl’s phenomenological method we need to do a couple of things. Firstly we need to engage in the steps of the method themselves. Husserl saw phenomenology as something that was available to anybody; it was something anybody could do. Certainly, Husserl’s technical exposition is challenging, but at its core he implores us to think for ourselves. And to think for ourselves we need to look at what is under our noses, the way things appear to consciousness. And to do this we need to think through how things appear to us, as well as what the nature of those appearances disclose. So, in this lecture I want to explain some of the core steps of Husserl’s method so as to help us get a sense of what phenomenology is all about it. To this end, I explain what Husserl has to say about natural attitude, bracketing, reduction, givenness, the phenomenological attitude and what it reveals about the nature of consciousness. In addition, I explain Husserl’s discovery of intentionality, one of the most important elements of phenomenology.

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Given Merleau-Ponty deemed it necessary to conclude PoPwith a reflection on the nature of freedom tells us of the importance he placed on the idea. In this lecture then I want to do three specific things. Firstly, I will explain what Merleau-Ponty has to say about the experience of time. This is important because Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical defence of freedom is inseparable from the question of temporality. This runs counter to conventional accounts of freedom in philosophy – free will versus determinism – In the second section, I explain how Merleau-Ponty constructs an alternative account of freedom as a form of self-awareness. In the last section I outline Merleau-Ponty’s own theory of human freedom.

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This lecture will begin with a discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s account of space. It is important to grasp what Merleau-Ponty means by space, the body is not a neutral and disinterested ‘thing’ but something projecting itself into space, into situations. Once we grasp what Merleau-Ponty means by space, then we can gain a sense of how all situations operate. For example, we will be able to understand Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between objective space and corporeal space. This distinction is brought into relief by a particular case study Merleau-Ponty explores i.e. Schneider. Schneider’s illness provides a very instructive account as to how humans relate to embodied space. In the second part of the lecture, I will explain how Merleau-Ponty deploys the Schneider case to make explicit how an individual with brain injury came to have a restrictive subject-object relation to the world. This will in turn enable me, in the final section, to explain what Merleau-Ponty has to say about sexuality in general, erotic perception, and their significance for our understanding of embodiment. 

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In this lecture, I want to look at one famous, and very specific topic which Merleau-Ponty tackles, and that is the phantom limb. Although Merleau-Ponty tackles a number of, what were then called ‘abnormal psychologies,’ his approach to the phantom limb provides us with a very acute sense of how he proceeds overall. Basically, if we can understand what he is doing with the phantom limb we can get a sense of all the other phenomena he tackles in PoP,such as sexuality, language, time, space, and what we will look to in the latter part of this lecture, habit.

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In this lecture I would like therefore to do a couple of things. Firstly, I would like to provide some brief biographical background on Merleau-Ponty. Then, I would like to talk about Merleau-Ponty’s primary philosophical method: existential phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty, in my view at least, is one of the most interesting innovators of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological method. Merleau-Ponty was, with the exception of perhaps Jean-Paul Sartre, the leading exponent of Phenomenology in France. Then, I will proceed to explain what Merleau-Ponty means by perception and conclude with Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the body.

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Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence is the most difficult, most obscure, and most fragmented of all of his philosophical proposals. It has been interpreted in a variety of ways by a variety of different philosophers and in the end, there is no real consensus on its value, interpretation or remit. Furthermore, the theory is unfinished and not fully worked out, and was likely to contribute to the non-book The Will to Power.What I am going to attempt here is a reconstruction. If eternal recurrence is to be presented as consistently as possible, I need to explain it cogently as I can, as well as tie it together to other core concepts of Nietzsche’s thought. But before that, we need to try and figure out exactly what Nietzsche means by eternal recurrence.

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In Thus Spake ZarathustraNietzsche says, ‘The overman is the meaning of the earth.’ So, it is pretty important in Nietzsche’s view. Here, I will begin by excluding some potential interpretations of what the übermenschis, in order to get a clearer sense of what Nietzsche understands by it. This will allow me to explain how the question of the übermenschrelates to his concept of amor fati,and Nietzsche’s optimistic fatalism. Subsequently, I will explain how the übermenschreveals the stakes of Nietzsche’s concept of morality and fate.

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In this lecture I outline how Nietzsche conceives of the will-to-power as a metaphysical question, how the will-to-power becomes a relational theory of forces, which in turn lays the ground for Nietzsche’s theory of perspectivity and the will-to-truth. 

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This week we turn our attention to Friedrich Nietzsche. In this lecture I outline what nihilism means, and then turn to Nietzsche’s explanation of active and passive nihilism from his book The Will to Power. My overall claim is that understanding Nietzsche’s account of nihilism is an essential prerequisite for understanding his more famous concepts i.e. slave-morality, the repudiation of Christianity, übermensch, amor fati,embodiment, the will-to-power, and becoming. Once we can grasp what he means by nihilism, only then can we grasp the totality of his work, as well as it’s specific ontological and ethical commitments.

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This week I am going to look at some key moments in the latter part of the PoS.Primarily, I am going to look at what Hegel has to say about culture and religion, moral theories, and ethical life (sittlichkeit).The latter part of the PoSis concerned with clarifying sets of social practices which count as spirit.

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Before we get to culture, politics, ethics and religion, there are still more steps to be carried out before we can understand ourselves as historical beings. Firstly, we need to understand how Hegel conceives of reason as a type of activity. In addition, to understand spiritual freedom (Geist) we need to comprehend what he has to say about the absolute. To this end, I will look at what Hegel says in the distinction he draws between reason and understanding. Also, I am going to explain a number of other forms of misrecognition i.e. stoicism, scepticism, unhappy consciousness, and the beautiful soul. These really are all different types of dependency, to which Hegel will proceed to provide an alternative account of freedom. Reasoning, in the end, will be the prerequisite for spiritual freedom. 

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This week’s lecture examines the transition from sense-certainty and perception to 'force and understanding'. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Subsequently, I will explain Hegel's account of desire, as well as the famous master-slave dialectic.

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This week’s lecture will begin with some historical and biographical context of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. I will proceed to explain what the text overall is trying to accomplish. Subsequently, I will turn to the opening chapters of the PoSand explain what Hegel means by sense-certainty. 

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This lecture concern's Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I examine some of the core features of Kant's famous text - noumenaland phenomenal,conditions of possibility, time and space, intuition and concepts. Most importantly, I try to explain just why understanding Kant is indispensable for any understanding the debates which go on to form Continental Philosophy in the 20th Century.

This lecture series are from one of our modules called 'Transcendence and the Body' which is a core module of our MA in Continental Philosophy. On this course we study the history and emergence of Continental Philosophy. Much of 19th Century thought can be understood as a productive debate between philosophers working in an idealist tradition - where the key questions are to do with the conditions of possibility of thought or presentation, whether these conditions are understood transcendentally or historically - and those working in a broadly materialist tradition - where the key questions concern the material basis of both mind and appearance. This thematic will be used to investigate key figures and positions within this period, whilst allowing also for the possibility that staging the debate in this way might obscure certain other problems, themes or methods. Philosophers studied will be selected from a list that includes Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Lange, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty among others.

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