General Information
Course Description
9504 - Anxiety [A] Prof. Jan Plug
This course will read a number of texts that attempt to formulate an understanding of anxiety as a, perhaps the, grounding mood or affect (Grundstimmung) of the subject. Our focus will be on the philosophical tradition of fear and trembling that emerges most prominently in Kierkegaard and Heidegger, but that can be traced back to Hegel and forward at least to Sartre. We also read psychoanalytic texts that attempt to distinguish fear from anxiety, from birth anxiety (Rank) to death drive (Freud), passing by way of the anxieties of language in Lacan. Throughout, our main focus will be a careful reading of the texts and with how they not only formulate but in fact seek to produce the effect of a certain anxiety in the effort to open up what Kierkegaard calls the possibility of possibility.
Possible readings:
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (master/slave dialectic)
Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, Fear and Trembling, The Sickness Unto Death
Heidegger, Being and Time (selections)
Freud, Introductory Lectures, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, “Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety”
Rank, The Trauma of Birth
Lacan, Seminar X (Anxiety)
Sartre, Being and Nothingness (selections), Nausea
Auden, The Age of Anxiety
