Nova PhDs

So, I think I have changed my mind a bit on the 19th Century class. I don't think I am going to order the Pinkard book for the class. It is a great book, and will still influence the way I do the class, but I think it is a bit too large to use for solely introductory purposes. I think, rather, that I am going to begin the class by reading a shorter essay by Robert Pippin on the "Kantian Aftermath."

I am also now strongly considering reading some pre-Hegel primary sources. Continuum has a book called Philosophy of German Idealism that has selections from Fichte, Jacobi, and Schelling (including perhaps the most kick-assedly titled philosophy essay ever, Fichte's "A Crystal Clear Report to the General Public Concerning the Actual Essence of the Newest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand").

What do you all think of reading selections from Fichte, Jacobi, and/or Schelling in an undergrad class?

I also could use a bit of advice on one of my other classes. Next fall I am also teaching a lower-level class called "European Worldviews," in which we will basically read a few philosophy texts, divided up into the categories(/"worldviews") "Enlightenment," "Romanticism," and "Existentialism." For each of the categories, we will also look at how the philosophy influenced/meshed with arts and literature.

In terms of determining what to teach in the class, I have a good handle on the following things:

1. the Enlightenment philosophy texts
   
2. the Romantic art/literature
   
3. the Existentialist philosophy and art/lit
   

Can any of you suggest something for the following?:

1. Works of art (including music) and/or literature to pair with the
   Enlightenment?
   
2. a philosophical work to pair with Romanticism that might be readily
   accessible to non-majors?
   

Any and all help is greatly appreciated...

Next fall semester, I am going to be teaching an upper-division undergraduate course on 19th Century Philosophy. I have a general idea of what areas I want to cover, and some idea of the books I want to use. I would like to pick your brains for some help on both counts, though.

First, here are the four general areas I intend to cover, in the order that I will do them in class:

1) A background-setting section where we discuss Kant and the development of German Idealism after Kant. I intend this to be a relatively brief introductory portion of the class.

2) A fairly in-depth discussion of Hegel. I imagine this taking up roughly half of the semester.

3) A discussion of Marx. I want this to rest on a sort of "Marx after Marxism" reading, where we focus on Marx as a philosopher in the German Idealist tradition.

4) A discussion of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. I would like to read each of them as being "post-Hegelian," or critics of German Idealism.

I am pretty tied to this structure, but am certainly willing to hear arguments that I am overemphasising things or leaving things out. What I am really more interested in, though, is advice on what texts to use. So here is what I am thinking of for each of the four sections:

1) I think I will use a secondary source for this part of the class, and am leaning toward Terry Pinkard's German Philosophy 1760-1860. I am curious to see if anyone thinks I should A) read some pre-Hegelian primary sources (Fichte's Vocation of Man, possibly?) or B) use some other secondary source.

2) For Hegel, I think I will use the Hegel Reader edited by Houlgate. This is largely because I want to do some of the Phenomenology and some of the Philosophy of Right (and there might be other things to use in this reader as well). Any arguments for doing Hegel differently (for example, possibly using just the Phenomenology)?

3) I am pretty set, I think, for the Marx section, and will probably use parts of the German Ideology and Grundrisse.

4) Here is where I really need help. What Kierkegaard and Nietzsche texts do you think would work best? If I pick the ones I know the best, it would be Fear and Trembling and The Genealogy of Morality. I have the feeling, though, that there are other texts that would work better with the Post-Hegelian theme. Any advice?

So there it is. Any and all advice or criticism is welcome.

If one cruises the internet for philosophy sites, one gets the impression that the hot new thing in (analytic) philosophy is something called “Experimental Philosophy.” I have been hearing this term for a while, partly because one of its golden boys, a cat at UNC named Joshua Knobe, was profiled as a “rising star” in the Chronicle last year. A big discussion of “X-phi” (as the obnoxiously cutesy seem to be calling it) has been kicked up on the net recently, though, because of an article on Salon.

After looking at some of this discussion, I wondered to myself, "what might all of this have to do with things happening in Continental philosophy?" I then figured I would post some of my own thoughts and ask you all about it.

First, though, lets have a brief description of Experimental phil from the horse's (Knobe's) mouth:

"Since the earliest days of analytic philosophy, it has been a common practice to appeal to intuitions about particular cases. Typically, the philosopher presents a hypothetical situation and then makes a claim of the form: ‘In this case, we would surely say....’ This claim about people’s intuitions then forms a part of an argument for some more general theory about the nature of our concepts or our use of language.
One puzzling aspect of this practice is that it so rarely makes use of standard empirical methods. Although philosophers quite frequently make claims about ‘what people would ordinarily say,’ they rarely back up those claims by actually asking people and looking for patterns in their responses. In recent years, however, a number of philosophers have tried to put claims about intuitions to the test, using experimental methods to figure out what people really think about particular hypothetical cases. At times, the results have been extremely surprising."

So, experimental philosophers actually do the empirical legwork (the most popular form of which seems to be adminstering surveys--a practice which is not strictly speaking an experiment, I think, but what the hell...). As an aside, it strikes me that the only thing that is at all new about this is that some guys who have philosophy degrees have hit the streets and administered surveys and so-forth, rather than relying on psychologists, etc. to do the empirical work.

Now, I don't know how interested I am in the specific work that is getting called "Experimental Philosophy." I do wonder, however, how the emphasis on empirical research jibes with continental philosophy. Well, one quick answer (which I think is ultimately a half truth) is that it doesn't fit with most of Continental phil, because it is based on the valorizing of the methods of the empirical natural sciences, and that is something of which continental philosophy is generally critical...

Consider, though, Horkheimer's early Frankfurt School plan for interdisciplinary research. It clearly included a strong commitment to using empirical data (and they even used surveys and questionairres...). There is still a commitment in critical theory (say, for example, in the attention Honneth pays to people's experiences of injustice) to such research.

In any event, I am interested to hear what you all think about the relation of continental philosophy to empirical research, both in terms of the history of continental phil (for--a possibly lame--example, is there room for empirical research in Heidegger's project) and in terms of your own research. Could there be an "Experimental Continental Philosophy"?