Introduction to Philosophy: Thinking beyond monolingualism

There is no thinking outside of language, as we learned at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, however, a new question arises: is this language a single natural language like ancient Greek, a lingua franca like Latin in the Middle Ages or Global English today, or an intrinsically philosophical language like German, as Martin Heidegger believed? Our “introduction to philosophy” takes a different approach. It is neither monolingual nor multilingual but rather translational. Instead of working with different concepts within one single language, or reconstructing their meaning from “classical” and “philosophical” languages, we will think with words—with words of different tongues that generate meaning only in the constant mutual translation. If the discordance between languages is a curse for religious belief, as the Biblical myth of Babel wants us to believe, for philosophy it is rather a blessing. In the end, to learn to philosophize means, before all, to learn to deal with differences. This is why the praxis of translation—of dealing with differences—must become an integral part of any serious introduction to philosophy today.

The class will work with one single book: Barbara Cassin (ed.), Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon, translated by:  Steven Rendall, Christian Hubert, Jeffrey Mehlman, Nathanael Stein, and Michael Syrotinski. Translation edited by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Students are not expected to discuss philosophy exclusively in English. On the contrary, they are encouraged to share the experience of (philosophical) thinking in their respective mother tongues.

Consists in the active participation and contribution (discursive, textual and performative).

The module grading is based on the mentioned contribution, active in-class participation and

• - submission of written assignments (word minimum of 500 total)

 “Students from other departments or universities will be given a place on the course subject to room capacities.”