Nigel De Juan Hatton, Ph.D

The history of ideas in the Western tradition has from its inception hosted a dynamic relationship between literature and philosophy. This course traces the genealogy of the relationship between literature and philosophy, as well as their intersections, tensions, affinities, and inter-textuality. How do literature and philosophy, in similar and different ways, explain and interrogate the human condition and the category of the human being? Why do literary objects fit well in the explication of philosophy? How does philosophy inhabit and bring meaning to literary worlds? Where do we place poetic philosophers and philosophical novels or poems in the literature and philosophy discussion? Readings range from ancient philosophy and epic poetry to contemporary philosophy and literature, leading students to familiarity with important formations connected to antiquity, and the medieval, renaissance, enlightenment, romanticist, and modern periods.

This topics course focused on existentialism and phenomenology introduces thinkers like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, Camus and Sartre, as well as Dostoevsky, Ellison and de Unamuno, and traces how those thinkers (as well as their influences) and developments challenged and impacted the western intellectual tradition across the twentieth century. Added pressure will be placed on the writings and lifeworld of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the 19th-century Danish thinker, and how his ideas traveled globally. We pay close attention to the shifts in categories, method and concepts for the articulation of consciousness that expands and troubles reason-centered approaches, and also examine how existentialists and phenomenologists (we will carefully examine these terms) have handled their own discontents, crises, and moral and ethical dilemmas. Discussion of philosophical texts will almost always be accompanied by references to films, novels, stories, and other materials that demonstrate how the relationship between philosophy and literature deepen our understanding of existentialism and phenomenology.