Dr. Ortega/PL380: Self and Other in Philosophy and

Course Description and Objectives

The overall aim of the course is to introduce students to different philosophical and literary accounts of self and "other"-to explanations of what it means to be a person and of our interaction with others. We will study various philosophical stances of self and "other" (Plato, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Frondizi, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Freire, Dussel) and compare them to literary approaches to both topics found in Latin American literature (short stories/novels by various Latin American authors such as Argueta (El Salvador), Bórges (Argentina), Carpentier (Cuba), Castellanos (México), Cortázar (Argentina), García Márquez (Colombia), Lispector (Brazil), Sarduy (Cuba) and Vargas Llosa (Perú). An analysis of the views of self and "other" provided by Latin American writers is intended to provide the opportunity to study the relationship between philosophy and literature as well as to show some of the different ways in which Latin Americans characterize themselves and their involvement in society. Consequently, students will have the opportunity to get a glance at certain aspects of Latin American culture and thus broaden their awareness/understanding of a culture different from their own.

Course Plan

Part I: The first part of the course will examine the question of self. We will study traditional philosophical explanations of selfhood, including the accounts of Plato and Descartes. Subsequently, we will examine the question of personal identity by way of an analysis of Locke's claim that memory is the criterion for personal identity and by way of an investigation of different responses to Locke. We will use Risieri Frondizi's book, The Nature of the Self, as a backdrop for our discussions of Descartes, Locke, and Hume. We will also look at philosophical accounts of selfhood which deviate from the traditional philosophical explanations-for example, Frondizi's Functional account of self, Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological account, and Ricoeur's account of narrative identity. This section of the course will also examine the various ways in which writers in the Latin American Tradition deal with the issue of self. Some of the questions that we will discuss are

1. Is it possible to give a completely ahistorical account of self? If so, in what sense is it helpful?
2. What are the motivations that philosophers have for providing a general account of selfhood?
3. Do phenomenological accounts of self really do justice to our experience?
4. Are literary accounts of self overly dependent on cultural and racial considerations?
5. What's the importance of the body in literary as well as philosophical accounts of self?
6. What can philosophical theories of the self learn from literary accounts and vice versa?

Part II: The latter part of the course will study the question of the "other", that is, it will study the different ways in which both philosophers and fiction writers have analyzed or described our interaction with others. We will study Hegel's and Marx's account of the "other' and subsequently look at how two Latin American thinkers, Dussel (Argentina) and Freire (Brazil) use these two influential accounts in their own theories, which focus on the relationship between those at the margin (the poor, the oppressed) and the ones dominating them,. Finally, we will see how literary accounts deal with the same issues. Our challenge will be to analyze the relationship between the philosophical and literary accounts of how we see ourselves ad others in order to find out the strengths and weaknesses of both types of approaches. Some of the questions that we will discuss are

1. Is it appropriate to describe our encounter with others in a purely general way?

1. Is the encounter of others always influenced by cultural considerations?
2. Or is this encounter motivated by the search for recognition (Hegel) or class struggle (Marx)?
3. Are the literary accounts too dependent on racial and cultural issues?
4. What can philosophical theories about the encounter with the "other" learn from literary ones and vice versa?

Required Texts

Two Course Readers, one on Philosophy texts [CRP] and another on Literary texts [CRL]

Argueta Manlio, A Day in a Life (New York: Vintage) [ADL]

Freire, Paulo, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed [PO]

Vargas Llosa, Mario, The Storyteller (New York: Penguin Books, 1990) [TS]