Selected Readings in Phenomenology

This course offers a critical introduction to phenomenology, one of the most important movements of twentieth-century European philosophy, including its French existentialist development, and its critics. The major themes and movements in phenomenology and existentialism will be studied through several key thinkers: Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas. Themes that will be critically considered include: intentionality, phenomenological description, perception and embodiment, moods and emotions, self-consciousness, the nature of the self, sociality and the surrounding lifeworld. The course will have both a historical and a critical orientation with an emphasis on reading selected primary-source texts in English translation.