2023

Contemporary Philosophical Thinking

Name: Contemporary Philosophical Thinking
Code: FIL2565L
6 ECTS
Duration: 15 weeks/156 hours
Scientific Area: Philosophy

Teaching languages: Portuguese
Languages of tutoring support: Portuguese, English
Regime de Frequência: Presencial

Sustainable Development Goals

Learning Goals

It is intended to contribute to students focusing on the horizon of contemporary thinking, especially of vectors and streams within the interface with problems of Psychology, as a complement to other subjects of compulsory attendance.
Students should
1) To acquire basic information about fundamental streams in contemporary philosophy;
2) To identify some of the key issues and methodology;
3) To exercise the acquired knowledge in analyzing a problem;
4) To present and critically discuss readings.

Contents

1. What is contemporary?
• Historical, cultural and philosophical notions of contemporary
• Contemporaneity, Modernity, Postmodernity
• The «life of cultures»: continuities, ruptures, the «new»

2. What is new in contemporary times?
• The fragmentation of knowledge in the early 20th century
• From certainty to suspicion: the value of interpretation
• Interpretation and transformation of the world
• Technoscience and ideology

3. Streams of contemporary thought
• Freud and Psychoanalysis
• Husserl's Phenomenology of intentionality
• The phenomenological discovery of existence: Heidegger and Sartre.
• The therapeutic extension of the philosophy: Phenomenology and Existential Analysis
• The otherness of madness, according to Foucault
• Exemplary analysis of an existential phenomenon (anguish)

4. Actually: love, liquid society, excess of positivity
• Ferry: love as a new social paradigm
• Baumann: the idea of a "liquid world"
• Han: "smooth" and "polished" in a society of fatigue.

Teaching Methods

Exposition, accompanied by reading and commentary of texts, in printed and video media. The debate among all the participants is privileged.

Assessment can be by final exam (100%) or by continuous assessment. Continuous assessment will be based on:
1) attendance and active participation (20%);
2) at least one oral presentation on a text or a theme, or a report in (30%);
3) a final written exam (50%)

Teaching Staff