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| 0618-4046-01 | Philosophy and Transformation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 4.0
Course description
The seminar aims to work with the notion of transformation, to reflect on it in different contexts, to think of the possibilities (and the promise) which it brings along, and alternately of its illusionariness and impossibility. Among the texts to be discussed: Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra", Kafka's "Metamorphosis", Sophocles' "Oedipus the King", Kundera's "Identity" and Rushdie's "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights". At the Indian end of the scale, we will read and discuss essays by Sri Aurobindo, including his commentary of the Bhagavadgītā (with constant reference to this classic text). We will also touch on Ramchandra Gandhi's "I am Thou". Arindam Chakrabarti, John Taber and Gayatri Spivak will provide the theory through which we will read the different materials in our "philosophical laboratory". The material selection indicates that the main question to be reflected upon in the seminar is the question of self-identity. Another question, "practical" if you wish, is whether philosophy can only discuss transformation, or does it have the power to actually bring about transformation.