(8 lectures, 45 minutes/lecture)
Course No. 420
National University
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
What does it mean to be human? How can we find meaning in our lives? How can we maintain our selfhood?

This series by Professor Rick Roderick examines from a philosophical perspective the self under siege from the start of modernity to the beginnings of the postmodern age in the late 20th century.

As we move into the 21st century, we encounter the self buried under oceans of complex technology and information, leading us to question whether it is at all possible to construct some small space within which an "authentic" self might dwell.

These lectures present us with a range of philosophical narratives about how the self might be constructed and understood.

Lecture 1 shows how current attempts to understand the self, society, and our place in it are "deflationary."

But there are fundamental and important questions about the self which make it difficult to accept the deflationary view:

* Who are we as human beings?
* What is our place in society and the world?
* What is our place vis-à-vis our commitments, our station in life, and our roles as significant others, parents, workers, or citizens?

Lecture 2 focuses on Heidegger's concept of "Dasein," or what it means to be a human being in the world.

Though Heidegger is infamous because of his connections to fascism, Professor Roderick cautions us not to let that blind us to his real insights.

You learn that Heidegger offers us a hermeneutic— or interpretive— narrative of the self, rather than a methodical study.

For Heidegger, the self is an entity that lives through a period of time with a threefold structure of past, present, and future.

All of these are informed and shaped by "care." Heidegger also asserts that anxiety before the fear of nothingness, or death, is what really reveals the formal, existential character of Dasein.
A Productive Misunderstanding

Lecture 3 shows how Jean-Paul Sartre's misunderstanding of Heidegger was, in fact, a productive one.

It led the young Sartre to develop his theory of existentialism, a concept of the self in which human beings have no essence.

This understanding allowed Sartre to pursue his project of an absolutely free human being, unlimited by objects and other people.

We learn how Sartre eventually came to see some of the limits posed by existentialism:

* Without God, human beings are left all alone to create their destiny. This is the sense in which we are condemned to be free.
* The brute objectivity of nature also imposes certain limitations, standing in the way of our actions.
* Other people are a block to our freedom.

Professor Roderick explains how the mature Sartre underwent a profound change. Instead of viewing people as an obstacle to freedom, he came to see collective action as a way to make the world a place worth living in.

Lecture 4 studies Herbert Marcuse, the most popular philosopher of the 1960s, and examines the two contradictions Marcuse sees as being at the heart of modernity.

* It turns out not to be the case that the more we rid ourselves of myth and superstition the less afraid we are in the face of the unknown.
* Instrumental rationality leads to irrational outcomes and dangers.

We learn how Marcuse's practice of imminent critique suggests ways to eliminate these contradictions and allow humans to live a life with more freedom and solidarity.

Lecture 5 examines the philosophy of Jurgen Habermas, whose work in many ways is an outgrowth of Marcuse's.

You learn Habermas is particularly interested in developing critical theory that addresses what he sees as the three fundamental human interests:

* the need to reproduce life through labor
* the need for clear communication
* the need for human emancipation.

Among these, Habermas is best known for his work in the area of communication, which he asserts central to the formation of the self.

Lecture 6 is devoted to Michel Foucault and his attempts to develop a fundamental critique of our dominant ideologies—those central paradigms within which we do our politics, run our educational systems and prison systems, and operate our psychiatric disciplines.

You learn how he performs this critique through what he calls genealogies, and Professor Roderick uses the genealogy of punishment and the prison system to make the concept clear.
A Self Under Surveillance

The lecture shows how during the 20th century punishment becomes observation and the control of bodily movement, a condition Foucault believes describes our larger social world. From his perspective, then, the self of our time exists under surveillance.

Lecture 7 considers the work of Jacques Derrida, who is in many ways responsible for the concept of deconstruction, or the idea that meaning is never fixed.

According to Derrida, there can be no final philosophical interpretation, and we come to understand that philosophy is the result of Indo-European languages and Western civilization and as such does not represent universal truths.

Derrida asserts that there are ways of reading a book, of being a self, rather than a right way— an idea that in his view allows for a freer, richer self.

Lecture 8 examines the work of Jean Baudrillard, the most important theorist that can be characterized as postmodern.

We learn that Baudrillard sees himself as a post-apocalyptic writer; for him the apocalypse has already occurred through the development of technology. He looks at the blurring of the lines between human beings and technology, between reality and images, and concludes that the social has disappeared.

Instead, we are left with non-persons and simulations. And in an age of film and televison, simulations are more real than reality.
A Self Already Lost

From Baudrillard's perspective, the self is not under siege; it is already lost.

* We rapidly change who and what we are just as we change our clothes and fashion. A personality is formed as a fad, a fashion.
* One of the sensations these rapid changes produce is ecstasy— the pure neural thrill, the visceral ecstatic feeling.
* The sense we get is one of vertigo.

But even in this rather hopeless picture, according to Baudrillard, there remains a curiosity about what experience would be like if we could have one. And there is an absolute extremism everywhere about how far people will go to try to have a genuine experience.

Can any of these postmodern symptoms show us the way out of the 20th century and toward a new construction of the human? Can we find meaning in the "world" that is already upon us?

It is our task to try.