History W4306

Columbia University

Fall 2005

Philosophy and Politics

(Topics in Modern European Intellectual History)

Wednesday, 9:00-10:50 a.m.

Fayerweather 301M

Professor Samuel Moyn

Fayerweather 616

4-3009

s.moyn@columbia.edu

AOL: samuelmoyn

Course Description

This course involves reading a sequence of writings about philosophy and politics: more specifically, about what it might mean to forge a convincing philosophy of modern political life. The geographical and chronological focus is on France, in the postwar years, and thus in reading and discussing this sequence of writings you may learn something about that place and time. (Because some of the debates involve Soviet history, you may learn something about that too, though your instructor is no authority on it.) The overall goal is to follow the development of a specific tradition of theoretical inquiry about politics, and eventually about democracy and human rights.

The main figures are Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lefort, and Marcel Gauchet, though we will also consider the ideas of a range of other French intellectuals like Pierre Clastres, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The goal is to understand them in their place, time, and traditions, but also to see what is of use in their thought, and to discuss it together in ordinary and accessible language.

The reading is heavy, and it is hard. But all that is required is a willingness to do it. Otherwise, the only prerequisite for this course is Contemporary Civilization (or some equivalent or better source of knowledge of similar materials, most especially texts by René Descartes, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud, who were the major reference points for all of the figures involved).

Do not sign up for this course if you are not prepared to read the books, on time, each week. To encourage you to do so, there is only a nominal final writing requirement of 10 pages (more if you like). The bulk of the writing you do for the class is to come in the form of a 1-2 page response paper for each week’s reading, except for one week when you are expected to contribute a slightly longer outside book report (possible books to review are listed at the end of this syllabus). All such materials -- responses and reviews -- are to be posted online by midnight of the day of class and all students are expected to peruse all of them in advance. For these reasons, each response counts heavily towards your final grade (along with attendance and participation), and for every response you miss after the first one (which you can miss for any reason or none at all), your grade will begin to decline (progressively and eventually steeply).

The numbers: attendance/participation: 30%, responses/review, 50%; final paper, 20%.

Ordered Books

These books have been ordered for you at Labyrinth Books on 112th St.

You don’t have to buy them (they are on reserve too), but I would.

There are also a number of articles, to be made available to you for photocopy.

P. Clastres, Society against the State; M. Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World; J. Lacan, Ecrits; M. Merleau-Ponty, Adventures of the Dialectic (you may want to try to find this used because it is expensive as a new paperback); Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror: An Essay on the Communist Problem (ditto); Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. A. Koestler, Darkness at Noon, is out of print, but you can get hold of a cheap copy through http://www.abebooks.com, which is also a good source for finding the other readings, especially Humanism and Terror.

Schedule of Meetings and Readings

1. Sept. 7: Introductory

2. Sept. 14: Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Postwar Existentialism (1)

Reading: R. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (review from your past)

M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945), preface; introduction, chap. 1; part I, introduction and chaps. 4-5 and 6 (end only)

3. Sept. 21: Merleau-Ponty and Existentialism (2)

Reading: Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, part II, introduction and chaps. 1 and 4; part III, chaps. 1, 3

4. Sept. 28: Show Trials

Reading: Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (1941, trans. in French in 1945)

5. Oct. 12: Merleau-Ponty’s Politics (1)

Reading: Merleau-Ponty, “The War Took Place” (1945)

--, Humanism and Terror (1947)

Note: beginning this week, and also in weeks 6, 7, and 10, bring your Marx-Engels Reader to class with you.

6. Oct. 19: Merleau-Ponty’s Politics (2)

Reading: Claude Lefort, “The Contradiction of Trotsky” (1947)

Merleau-Ponty, The Adventures of the Dialectic (1955), preface and chaps. 2-4

7. Oct. 26: Merleau-Ponty’s Politics (3)

Reading: Merleau-Ponty, The Adventures of the Dialectic, chap. 5 and conclusion

8. Nov. 2: Merleau-Ponty’s Late Ontology

Reading: Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (1964) (excerpts)

--, “A Note on Machiavelli” (1949)

Lefort, “Thinking Politics” (1963)

9. Nov. 9: Jacques Lacan: Selfhood and Division

Reading: Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (1966), selections to be announced

Merleau-Ponty, “Preface to Freud” (1960)

10. Nov. 16: Claude Lefort

Reading: Lefort, “Novelty and the Appeal of Repetition” (1971)

—, “Outline of the Genesis of Ideology in Modern Societies” (1974)

—, “Politics and Human Rights” (1980)

—, “The Question of Democracy” (1983)

11. Nov. 23 (or some other date to be arranged): Pierre Clastres

Reading: Clastres, Society against the State (1974), selections to be announced

Marcel Gauchet, “Primitive Religion and the Origins of the State” (1977)

12. Nov. 30: Marcel Gauchet (1)

Reading: Samuel Moyn, “Savage and Modern Liberty”

Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World (1985) (start)

13. Dec. 7: Gauchet (2)

Reading: Gauchet, Disenchantment (finish)

--, “Tocqueville” (1980)

--, “A New Age of Personality” (1990s)

--, “Redefining the Unconscious” (1990s)

Books You Can Claim for Reports, Organized by Week

Week 2-3

Taylor Carman and Mark Hansen, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty

Jon Stewart, ed., The Sartre-Merleau-Ponty Debate, selected chapters

or any secondary work on Merleau-Ponty’s early philosophy

Week 4

David Cesarini, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind (bio)

Richard Crossman, ed., The God That Failed (why leave communism)

Arthur Koestler, Dialogue with the Dead (Spanish civil war imprisonment, near execution)

--, The Scum of the Earth (his concentration camp experience)

Martine Poulain, “A Cold War Best-Seller: The Reaction to Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon in France from 1945-1950” (reception history)

Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev (parallel novel)

Week 5

François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the 20th Century (why philo-communism?)

Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956 (why philo-communism?)

Sunil Khilnani, Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France (why philo-communism?)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (other early political essays)

Week 6-7

Raymond Aron, “Adventures and Misadventures of the Dialectic”

Week 8

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs, Preface

M.C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (later philosophy)

Remy Kwant, From Phenomenology to Metaphysics (same)

Jerrold Seigel, “A Unique Way of Existing: Merleau-Ponty on the Subject” (same)

Week 9

David Macey, Lacan in Contexts

or any introduction to Jacques Lacan’s thought

Week 10

Michael Scott Christofferson, French Intellectuals against the Left (political context)

Bernard Flynn, The Political Philosophy of Claude Lefort (interpretive)

Week 11

Pierre Clastres, The Archeology of Violence (collected papers)

--, Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians (ethnography; highly recommended)

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (primitivism)

Samuel Moyn, “Of Savagery and Civil Society: Pierre Clastres and the Tranformation of French Political Thought” (overview of Clastres’s thought and politics)

Marshall Sahlins, “The First Affluent Society” (primitive indolence)

Week 12-13

Natalie Doyle, “Democracy as Sociocultural Project…” (Lefort and Gauchet)

Marcel Gauchet, with Gladys Swain, Madness and Democracy (his response to Foucault’s Discipline and Punish)