Roy Ben-Shai

Does life have a purpose, a meaning? What does it mean “to be”? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a woman (or to be a man)? What does it mean to be Black (or to be white)? What makes us into who we are? What distinguishes each of us? And what, if anything, is in common to all of us? These and other questions are raised by existentialist philosophy and literature, mostly through interrogation of real-life experiences, situations, and “fundamental emotions” such as anxiety, boredom, loneliness, and shame. In the first half of this course, we will get acquainted with the core tenets of existentialist thought by reading two of its most influential figures: Jean-Paul Sartre (France, 1905-1980) and Martin Heidegger (Germany, 1889-1976). In the second half, we will analyze texts by authors who set out to expand or challenge these core tenets on the grounds of their experiences of oppression. These authors are Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, and Jean Améry. Group conference will meet weekly and play a central role in this course. In it, we will mostly read literary texts or watch films that are relevant to the work of the above-listed authors. Conference material will include stories by Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, and Ralph Ellison and films such as The Battle of Algiers (1967) and Monsieur Klein (1977).

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein, first published in German in 1921, consists of seven main “propositions.” The first is “1. The world is all that is the case”; the last, “7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” Between the two are some 90 pages of notoriously enigmatic statements—on topics ranging from religion and mysticism to science and logic, language, subjectivity, and thinking—that have fascinated readers for more than a century. While the Tractatus has become one of the canonical texts of analytical philosophy, it is also among the most influential texts of 20th-century philosophy more generally. Its laconic brevity and oracular style make it an excellent platform for practicing close, collective, philosophical reading and conversation in the seminar setting. We will read it together, line by line, in and out of class, alongside secondary texts that exemplify its range of influence and competing interpretations from analytic to continental philosophy. We will conclude the class by looking at and reflecting on Wittgenstein’s striking change of mind and style in Philosophical Investigations—his last (and only other) book. Students participating in this course must show a philosophical passion and commitment; a diligent work ethic; and a spirit of comradery, collaboration, and generosity.

In this seminar, we will study closely one of the most influential books of 20th-century philosophy: Being and Time, by German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1776). Among the founding texts of existentialism and phenomenology, Being and Time (1927) offers an existential analysis of the human condition, including what it means to be in the world, to be with others, and to be toward death, as well as the difference between authentic and inauthentic modes of being. This work revolutionized some of the most deep-seated assumptions in philosophy, psychology, and science, inspiring new movements in psychoanalysis, feminism, linguistics, political theory, literary theory, and other fields.

This reading seminar will consist of a close study of one book, A Thousand Plateaus, which was coauthored in 1980 by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari.A Thousand Plateaus, the second volume of their magnum opus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia—the founding text of a movement of thought called “poststructuralism”—is among the most influential books of 20th-century philosophy. As its name suggests, the book presents a vision, or visions, of the world and of history as multilayered and multiplex rather than homogenous and linear. The book teaches us to look and to think of things and of ourselves from a variety of new and shifting angles, with the aim of providing means of resistance, empowerment, and sometimes escape against capitalism, fascism, and forces of normalization. To do this, Deleuze and Guattari draw on a broad range of philosophical, literary, and artistic texts and on modalities of experience that have traditionally been associated with madness. Their writing style is bold and dazzling, full to the brim with new terminologies (many of which have since become common tropes in the humanities and the social sciences); it is also challenging and dense. Engaging their work fruitfully requires a mind that is, like theirs, open and adventurous, willing to take risks and follow unpredictable turns. We will proceed in workshop fashion, reading 30-40 pages a week in advance of each class, writing short analyses throughout the semester, and coming to class prepared and eager to work together toward increased understanding. In addition to the prerequisite, students enrolling in this class should, more importantly, have a philosophical passion and commitment, a diligent work ethic, and a spirit of camaraderie, collaboration, and generosity.

Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece more than 2,500 years ago, addressing fundamental questions about being and time, about the human condition, and about ethics and politics, science and religion. Despite the universal nature of these questions, for most of these 2,500 years philosophy was practiced (at least publicly) mostly by men. It was not until the 20th century that this convention began to be significantly challenged, both practically (by the fact that more and more women entered the forefront of philosophical work) and theoretically (by questioning the historical contents of this male-dominant tradition). This yearlong course will survey continental philosophy in the 20th and 21st centuries that, countering the aforementioned tradition, focuses exclusively on the work of women in philosophy. Among the authors we may read are Sarah Ahmed, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Karen Barad, Talia Bettcher, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, bell hooks, Luce Irigaray, Melany Klein, Julia Kristeva, Audre Lorde, Maria Lugones, Simone Weil, Sylvia Wynter, and Virginia Woolf. Some of these philosophers are feminist or consider sexual difference as philosophically pertinent, and some are not. One way or another, surveying their thought will be our means for acquiring a comprehensive view of key developments in continental philosophy in the last and present centuries, including phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, structuralism and poststructuralism, feminism, black feminism, decolonial, and queer theories. This is a reading- and writing-intensive course (readings will not normally exceed 30 pages per week, but philosophical texts can be extraordinarily demanding). Students will be evaluated based on weekly reading assignments, participation in group work and group discussions during class, and timely submission of three short papers each semester, as well as demonstrable investment in conference work throughout the year. Biweekly in fall, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and group conferences that may include academic skill development such as time management and effective communication, as well as research, reading, writing, and editing. Biweekly in spring, students will meet with the instructor for individual conference

What is humanity? What, if anything, makes us different from other modes of being, and what kind of responsibility do we have with respect to what is considered nonhuman? To broach these questions, this seminar will offer a critical survey of the history of Western philosophy with a focus on the development of humanism and subsequent critiques of it. Specifically, we will look at different ways in which the philosophical tradition defined the human being in contradistinction from, or relation to, nature. Texts will range from ancient philosophy (the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle), to modern philosophy (Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche), to recent developments (New Materialism, Eco-Feminism, philosophy of technology). This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects

Hannah Arendt famously wrote that 19th-century Jews stood “between pariah and parvenu,” a formulation that embodies the complex relationship between Jews and the modern world. With the rise of the new science in the 17th century, Enlightenment beliefs and practices in the 18th century, and the emancipation of Jewish communities in the 19th century, the role played by Jewish philosophers—in advancing these processes, as well as struggling to locate themselves within them—became increasingly prominent. Tracing the history of Jewish thinkers from the 17th to the 20th centuries, we will consider how they grappled with their cultural heritage in a climate of enlightenment and emancipation on the one hand and anti-Semitism, persecution, and pogroms on the other. Central themes include the role of the sacred in the modern world, alienation and exclusion, national consciousness and utopianism, memory, and cultural despair. While most of our sources are philosophical (Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Maimon, Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Arendt), we’ll read historical documents, theological treatises, novels, poems, and correspondences, as well.

The magnum opus, Ethics, of great early modern Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1633-1672) will serve as the focus of this course. German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi once wrote that “Spinoza is the only philosopher who had the courage to take philosophy seriously; if we want to be philosophers, we can only be Spinozists.” Even if Jacobi’s statement is exaggerated, it is certainly true that studying Spinoza will make us better philosophers. But Spinoza promises much more. He claims that those who follow the guide of his Ethics become freer, wiser, and, above all, happier. Ethics is a notoriously difficult and enigmatic text, written in the form of geometrical proofs, even concerning psychological, moral, and theological matters. Yet, many philosophers and poets considered it exceptionally beautiful. Among the questions the book tackles are: What determines our desires, and in what ways can we, or should we, control them? In what ways can we be free, and in what ways are our behaviors and desires predetermined? In what ways can we be unique, and in what ways are we an inherent part of a greater whole? As we will learn, Spinoza argued that God and Nature are synonyms and that, to achieve an eternal and blissful life, we do not need to die and go to heaven. We do not even need to change the world or ourselves. All we need is to understand the way things are.

What is being? What is time? What is justice? What is truth? What is the best way to live, and should we fear death? More than 2,500 years ago in Ancient Greece, a tradition of asking this sort of question developed under the name “philosophy,” which is Greek for “love of wisdom.” Veering away from the mythological and religious traditions dominant at the time, the first writers we now recognize as “philosophers” broke radically new ground for self-understanding and set the stage for modern scientific, political, and theological ideas. In this course, we will read the earliest surviving texts of this tradition, by a group of authors who are now known collectively as the “Pre-Socratics.” These include Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Ancient Atomists, to name a few. These texts are fragmentary, since the full works are lost. The ideas that we find in them are creative, inspiring, and often funny. Studying them is an opportunity to reflect on what “philosophy” means and an invitation to philosophize, perhaps becoming philosophers ourselves. This survey course on the origins of philosophy is designed both for beginners, for whom it would serve as an introduction, and for those more experienced in philosophy who wish to enrich their knowledge of its roots. We will accompany our readings of the first philosophers with commentaries by later thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, and with occasional reference to non-Greek or non-philosophical sources.

One of the fundamental transformations to occur in society and culture over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries is the understanding of sex and love and the relation—or nonrelation—between them. Among the many catalysts for this change, we may count changing perceptions of sexual difference, gender, sexuality, gender identity, and gender roles; an increasing range of possibilities for reproduction or nonreproduction; and the problematization of the nuclear, monogamous, heterosexual family structure. This yearlong seminar will engage in the philosophical examination of these topics. While we will read some ancient philosophy, including Plato’s Symposium and some late-modern texts by the Marquis de Sade and the Baron von Sacher-Masoch (the authors who gave their names to Sadism and to Masochism, respectively), most of our readings will be from 20th- and 21st-century sources, including Sigmund Freud, Claude Levi-Strauss, Georges Bataille, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Audre Lorde, Lee Edelman, Paul Preciado, Maggie Nelson, and Luce Irigaray. Students will be required to not read Fifty Shades of Grey.

Where do we turn to understand the human experience of time? Science and technology might tell us about the physical flow of time or how the units of seconds, minutes, hours, and days might help to order time. Philosophy and literature, however, broaden the question of what time really is, emphasizing its inscrutability and elusiveness. Works in these disciplines demonstrate not only the mystery of human temporality but also the ways in which language and art attempt to capture, represent, or escape time. This course will examine the abiding concern with time and the complexities of temporal experience by examining a range of philosophical and literary writings, from antiquity to the present, as well as several films. Readings will include works by Augustine, Nietzsche, Kant, Kristeva, and Heidegger, as well as literary texts by Boethius, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Woolf.

Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece more than 2,000 years ago, addressing fundamental questions about being and time, about the human condition, about ethics and politics, about science and religion. Despite the fundamental and universal nature of these questions, philosophy was practiced (at least publicly) mostly by men for the majority of those 2,000 years. It was not until the 20th century that this convention began to be significantly challenged, both practically (by the fact that more and more women entered the forefront of philosophical discussion) and theoretically (by questioning the validity and scope of this male-dominant tradition). This yearlong course is a survey of 20th-century continental philosophy that, countering the aforementioned tradition, focuses exclusively on the work of women in philosophy. Among the authors we may read are Sarah Ahmed, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Talia Bettcher, Judith Butler, bell hooks, Luce Irigaray, Melany Klein, Julia Kristeva, Audre Lorde, Maria Lugones, Simone Weil, Sylvia Winter, and Virginia Woolf. Some of these philosophers are feminists or consider the issue of sexual difference as central to their work or to philosophy in general; some are not. More importantly for our purposes, surveying their thought will be our means of acquiring a comprehensive view of the key developments in continental philosophy of the 20th and 21st centuries and the relations between them, including phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, structuralism and poststructuralism, feminism, black feminism, and trans-feminism, decolonial and queer theories. During the fall semester, in addition to biweekly individual conferences, first-year students will have a biweekly group conference, in which we will discuss the nature of academic work in general and practice research, reading, writing, and editing skills.