Freshman Seminar 100             Existentialism                Fall 1999

Professor Edwin McCann

MHP-107, 213-740-5169, FAX 213-740-5174, mccann@usc.edu

Course home page: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~mccann/courses/fsem993

In this seminar we will read and discuss some of the most important philosophical and literary works in the existentialist tradition. We will address such questions as: what is existentialism, anyway? In what way is it a response to the threat of meaninglessness in a world in which traditional religious and cultural constructs of meaning have lost their force? Is existentialism committed to atheism, or to a subjective relativism about values?

Books for the course

(In bookstore)
1. Robert Bretall, ed. A Kierkegaard Anthology (Princeton)
2. Albert Camus, The Stranger (Vintage)
3. Robert Cumming, ed. The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (Vintage)
4. Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and other plays (Vintage)
5. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (Grove)
(E-texts at course website)

6. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
7. Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Requirements

1. Regular attendance and participation in seminar meetings. If there are three or more unexcused absences, the student will receive a grade of 'NC' (No Credit).

2. At each session, each student will bring to class a one paragraph summary of the main points of the reading, and a list of two or three questions the student wishes to raise for discussion.

3. One 3-4 page paper, due by 11/10/99.

Schedule of readings and discussions

Week one (9/1/99): Introduction and overview.

Week two (9/8/99): Consciousness, freedom, and the threat of meaninglessness. Reading: Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

Week three (9/15/99): Alienation as the modern condition. Reading: Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Week four (9/22/99): The absurd life. Reading: Camus, The Stranger

Week five (9/29/99): Kierkegaard on the stages of life. Reading: The Diary of a Seducer from Either/Or (Bretall pp. 19-108).

Week six (10/6/99): Truth, faith, and the existing individual. Reading: Kierkegaard, selections from Fear and Trembling (Bretall, pp. 118-29) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Bretall, pp. 195-231).

Week seven (10/13/99): Existentialism, freedom, and responsibility. Reading: Sartre, Being and Nothingness in Cumming pp. 101-137

Week eight (10/20/99): Bad faith, relations with others. Reading: Sartre, Being and Nothingness in Cumming pp. 137-66, 188-230.

Week nine (10/27/99): Hell is other people. Reading: Sartre, No Exit

Week ten (11/3/99): Nostalgia for meaning. Reading: Beckett, Waiting for Godot