CRT4010

Recognitions

Alexander GarcÌa D[cedilla]ttmann

12 points
* 2 hours per week
* Second semester
* Clayton

Objectives On the successful completion of this subject students should have a cogent awareness of the valencies of `recognition' in the conceptual field of contemporary ethics and politics. Successful students should have mastered a critical understanding of the theorists to whose works they will have been introduced. In addition, students should have demonstrated an ability to interpret these theories, and to evaluate their arguments in lucid prose.

Synopsis In this seminar we will discuss issues related to multiculturalism. It will consist of two parts. In the first part we will introduce a new definition of recognition, a decisive notion in the current debates around multiculturalism and its impact on ethics and politics. In the second part we will confront this redefined notion with the one used by authors such as J[cedilla]rgen Habermas, Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth. To the `politics of recognition' conceptualised in their recent writings we will oppose a different politics, a politics based on a recognition that maintains the tension between the social agents rather than dissolving it. We will use the work of Adorno, Derrida, Freud, Hegel, Heidegger, Rawls, Walzer, Wittgenstein.

Assessment Seminar paper (3000 words): 30%
* Essay (6000 words): 70%

Prescribed texts

Derrida J `Signature event context' in Margins of philosophy
Freud S Civilisation and its discontents
Hegel G W F Phenomenology of spirit (chapter on self- consciousness)
Taylor C The politics of recognition Princeton U P
Taylor C The ethics of authenticity Harvard U P
Walzer M Two kinds of universalism

Recommended reading

Adorno T W `Meditations on metaphysics' in Negative dialectics Routledge
Rawls J A theory of justice
Wittgenstein L On certainty Blackwell