Universität Wien
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180157 PS The Phenomenology of Habits (2016S)

4.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 18 - Philosophie
Continuous assessment of course work
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 45 participants
Language: German, English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

Seminar 1: March 9th
General Introduction to the phenomenology of Habits .This session gives an introduction to the topic of habits and provides an overview of three guiding sections of the course:

A: Knowing the world unreflectively (seminar 2-5)
In our first section of seminars, we set out to see how habits make the world familiar to us. In phenomenology, embodied practices and embodied knowledge is a way in which the world makes itself understood. We set out by establishing the relation between habits and our embodied understanding of the world.

B: Autonomy and Responsibility in Habitual Agency (Seminar 6-9)
In this second section of seminars, we investigate the relation between habits on the one hand and autonomy and freedom on the other. If we are engaged unreflectively in the world, knowing it by being emerged in it, how are we to see ourselves as responsible and free in relation to our habitual agency? Is freedom merely an exception from our otherwise unreflective actions?

C: Automatization, Unfamiliarity and Self-Alienation in Habits (Seminar 10-13)
In this third section of seminars, we question how much automatization and unreflectivness we can endure. Are there limits to our self-familiarity, are there ways in which our ownmost familiar actions can become strangely foreign to us and thus appear to us with otherness? Which kind of self-experience is at stake in habitual agency?

Seminar 2: March 16th
A1: Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012):"The Spatiality and Motility of One's own Body&"; and "The synthesis of one's own body" pp. 100-14 and pp. 137-155 in Phenomenology of Perception 2012, London: Routledge, transl. by Donald A. Landes

Seminar 3: April 6th
A2: Heidegger, M. (1993) Sein und Zeit, §§ 14-18, pp.63-88

Seminar 4: April 13th
A3: Ravaisson, F. (2008): Of Habit, transl. by Clare Carlisle and Mark Sinclair, pp. 23-77
Seminar 5: April 20th

A4: Rietveld, E. (2008): Unreflective Action. A Philosophical Contribution to Integrative
Neuroscience, pp. 125-168 Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, ILLC Dissertation Series

Seminar 6: April 27th
B1: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: Book II: section 1-7; Book III: section 1-5

Seminar 7: May 4th
B2: Dewey, J (1921) Human Nature and Conduct, New York; Cosimo Classics pp. 14-41; pp. 172-99;

Seminar 8: May 11th
B3: Korsgaard, C. (1996) "The Authority of Reflection" in The Source of Normativity, (Ed.) Onora O'Neill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.90-130

Seminar 9: May 18th
B4: Railton, P. (2009) "Practical competence and fluent agency" in Reasons for Action (ed.) D. Sobel and S. Wall, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.81-115

Seminar 10: May 25th
C1: Ricoeur, P. (2007) Freedom and Nature. The Voluntary and the Involuntary, Evanstone: North Western University Press, Chapter 2, section [3] 'Habit', pp.280-307

Seminar 11: June 1st
C2: Waldenfels, B. (2004) "Bodily experience between selfhood and otherness" in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (3) pp. 235-48

Seminar 12: June 8th
C3: Ratcliffe, M. (2009) "Existential Feeling and Psychopathology", in Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology,
16(2), pp.179-194.

Seminar 13: June 15th
C4: Fuchs, T. (2012): "Body memory and the Unconscious" in Founding Psychoanalysis Phenomenologically. Phenomenological Theory of Subjectivity and the Psychoanalytic Experience (Ed. Lohmar, D. and Jagna Brudzinska) pp.69-82, Phaenomenologica 199, Springer

  • Wednesday 09.03. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 16.03. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 06.04. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 13.04. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 20.04. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 27.04. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 04.05. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 11.05. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 18.05. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 25.05. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 01.06. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 08.06. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 15.06. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 22.06. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock
  • Wednesday 29.06. 09:45 - 11:15 Hörsaal 3B NIG 3.Stock

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Title: The phenomenology of habits
Time: Wednesdays, 09:45- 11:15,
Place: Hörsaal 3 B, NIG 3rd floor
First meeting: 10th of March 2016
Teacher: Dr. Line Ryberg Ingerslev
Language: English

Course Description
A rational agent is someone who knows what she is doing and why; and we hold her responsible for her actions. However, in our everyday lives we often act automatically, unreflectively and sometimes even involuntarily. In this course we will examine how habits make the world familiar to us, but also how temporal displacements, disintegration and self-alienation as part of our habits are constitutive of human self-experience. We will attempt to describe and understand everyday actions that we perform without knowing why or how. Further, we will question how habitual actions belong to us although we don't seem to be the conscious author of our actual doings. We will touch on aspects central to habits and unreflective action namely ownership, volition and responsibility. We will discuss views on human agency that allows us to consider even non-rational acts like habits, obsessive behaviour, and psychopathological symptoms to be personal. By examining the structure of self-experience in habits we will question how temporal displacements, disintegration and self-alienation are at the root of human self-experience. The central readings of this course will be of Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Ravaisson, Aristotle and others.

Aims
The goal of this course is to make the students familiar with central topics in existential phenomenology and philosophy of mind concerning self-understanding and self-experience in habits and unreflective action. By the end of the course the student will be able to reflect critically on central arguments in recent and classical debates in existential philosophy and phenomenology on habit, self-awareness in agency, selfhood, and unreflective actions. Further, the students will be capable of contextualizing these issues with matters of our everyday life such as decision making, responsibility and bodily ownership. Furthermore, the students will practice their fundamental philosophical skills in presenting arguments as they will be giving oral presentations as well as writing short essays on topics focused on in class.

Method
Close reading of texts, joint discussion, group based discussions, oral presentations, written presentations. All readings for this course will be available on Moodle.

Assessment and permitted materials

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Requirements
- The students should attend 9 or more seminars out of 13.
- The students are expected to read the texts carefully before class and be prepared to discuss the texts in class.
- The students are expected to give one oral presentation of the central arguments of one of the readings during the semester.
- Finally, the students are expected to submit two short essays on topics discussed in class while covering at least two of the assigned texts from the syllabus. The essays are expected to be of 2500 words each.

Deadlines and Guidelines:
The two essays should be submitted
1) 12:00 Thursday June 29th, 2016
2) 12:00 Friday July 29th, 2016
Papers can be submitted in German or English. Further guidelines will be uploaded on Moodle.
Students will achieve 4 ECTS points from participating successfully in this course.

Examination topics

This seminar is structured similiar to a reading group. The focus lies on a close reading of the texts and their discussion during the seminar sessions. It is expected that every student reads the texts closely and participates actively in the disucssions. The instructor will facilitate the discussion and support students to acquire a good understanding of the texts and their position in the context of the debate.

Reading list

Please find detailed course description and syllabus on Moodle

Association in the course directory

BA M 5.1, PP 57.3.2

Last modified: Mo 07.09.2020 15:36