CSLC 116 Heidegger and the Ecstasy of Being

This course will be centered around an in-depth investigation of one of the most controversial and influential philosophers of the 20th Century, Martin Heidegger. Rejecting what he saw as the the tradition of western metaphysics and its quest for absolute knowledge, Heidegger's phenomenological approach focused on an analysis of lived experience and the structures that make that experience possible. Fundamental to this analysis are the ideas of finitude and falliabiltiy. Human beings, for Heidegger, are never closed and completed, secure in their knowledge and understanding of themselves, but beings who are fundamentally concerned with their own being, who seek to determine themselves from within the complex social, historical, and interpersonal contexts into which they were thrown. As such, philosophy, for Heidegger, becomes interpretation, the attempt to interpret and reinterpret oneself and one's place within a changing and complex world, always with the possibility of failure. The course will investigate this project of "existential hermeneutics" through an in depth investigation of some of Heidegger's major writings. The first half of the course will focus on a close reading of the first half of Being and Time while in the second half we will look at Heidegger's post war essays, his turn to "poetic thinking" and the legacy of Heidegger's thought on 20th century Continental philosophy. We will investigate Heidegger's works from out of their historical context, including Heidegger's relation to National Socialism.