Fall Semester: Conscious Evolution in the Romantic Tradition and Continental Philosophy

Faculty: Jim McNamara (64hr)

In the fall semester, we will address the problematic nature, and the evolutionary promise, of the crisis in Western cosmology, drawing on the work of Joseph Campbell and Richard Tarnas, as well as the Romantic tradition in culture and the arts, and continental philosophy in its various inflections through existentialism, critical theory, postmodernism.

Course Sections

Class 1 will be an introductory overview, getting to know you class.

Section 1: The Crisis in Western Cosmology

In classes 2 & 3 we will set the scene by surveying the field through the lenses of Rick Tarnas’ (Passion of the Western Mind) and Joseph Campbell’s (Creative Mythology) mythological and depth psychological perspective, highlighting the Romantic/Enlightenment, organismic/mechanistic, and religion/arts polarities in this evolutionary crisis. In classes 4 & 5, we will do a historical, thematic overview of the revolutionary, paradigm shifting events of the 20th ©, the century that exploded.

Section 2: Continental Philosophy

Classes 6, 7 & 8 will be given to continental philosophy. Drawing on David West’s An Introduction to Continental Philosophy we will look at the phenomenological and existential traditions (Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre), the Marxist/psychoanalytic critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the poststructuralist decentering of the subject and the break with humanism, Derrida’s deconstruction of Western metaphysics and the varieties of postmodernism ( including the philosophical critique of the Enlightenment and modernism, postmodernism as a stage in Western society, the politics of ‘difference’ and the ethics of ‘otherness’). In class 9 we will look at the writings of some popular representative’s of this field – Sontag, Eco, Žizek.

Section 3: The Romantic Arts, Psychology and Culture

Class 10 will be based in William’s & Wadell’s Chamber of Maiden Thought, which uses various authors to illustrate the literary origins of the psychoanalytic model of the mind – we will take the examples of Milton, Blake, Keats. Class 11 will be based in Brickman’s American Romantic Psychology, which shows the Jungian themes in the writings of Poe, Emerson, Dickinson, Melville, particularly tracing the triadic evolutionary spiral of unity, fragmentation, reunion in the process of individuation, enacting the Hegelian theme that “God must be all in all and each must be God”, the homo dei theme of HEP.

Classes 12 & 13 will be a HEP tour of 20th © arts, looking particularly at the Romantic themes of the (im)mediated construction of reality and identity, the function of darkness, nothingness, downwardness and defeat in the evolution of consciousness, existential mysticism as it shows itself in the arts as part of the evolution of divine-human co-creative identity, the role of duende, daimon, demon in the (r)evolutionary themes of eros, chaos, thanatos and erotic transgression, the hip counterculture of the 20th © alien divine child, and the chthonic theme in rock’n’roll.

Section 4: Romantic Irony and the Circuitous Return

Class 14 will be based in Abram’s Natural Supernaturalism - Tradition, and Revolution in Romantic Literature and Art, where we will trace the idea of life as a journey of self-alienation and self-recovery through transgression of pre-established identity and reality boundaries, the (fortunate) fall into disunity (variously seen as sin, evil, suffering, pathology) and the self-redemption of coming to terms with this ‘otherness’ through dialectic integration, creating an evolved form of original unity. We will look at Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Eliot, Lawrence as exponents of this theme of spiral circuitous return. In classes 15 & 16 we will look specifically at how the Romantic theme integrates into HEP, from early German philosophical and poetic romanticism (Schelling, Novalis, Schlegel), up through Naturphilosophie, Goethe, Nietzsche, depth psychology, existentialism, the romantic irony of the postmodern nouveau roman, Lacan’s work on desire as translated into the arts by Boothby, as well as Hirsch’s The Demon and the Angel which shows how the deep, dark, duende laden challenge of the fallen angel has inspired 19th and 20th © Western poetry, art and music. We will also look at the Norman O. Browne theme of the redemption of the body as an instrument of the soul, the Jungian phenomenological tradition’s understanding of ‘poetic thanatology’, and the HEP revolutionary evolution theme of passionate, spontaneous, emergent self creation, as expressed in Jackson Pollock‘s account of his painting style “When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.” (Hirsch, p173)