POL 019 - Politics and Literature

In his The Will to Power (1900), Friedrich Nietzsche provides us with an eloquent definition of nihilism. He asks what nihilism means. And his answer is that: “That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; ‘why?’ finds no answer.” ‘The highest values devaluating themselves’ means human beings are devoid of any higher moral and political principles to guide them in their behaviors, choices, and decisions in life. ‘The aim is lacking’ means that they cannot find ways to legitimize their lives, their behaviors, choices, and actions. In the absence of any moral and political principles to guide human beings, their decisions and behaviors, how can human beings make their decisions? In other words, if everything is allowed, and if everything is also prohibited at the same time, how can one choose? How can one live? 

In this course, we will study prominent works of world literature to explore the ways in which they engage with nihilism as a moral and political problem. First, we will briefly talk about the relations between literature and philosophy, and discuss in what ways literary works can be seen/read as philosophical writings. Secondly, we will learn about the problem of nihilism in its historical and intellectual context, i.e. ‘the pantheism controversy’, as well as its evolution during the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and different aspects of it (epistemological, metaphysical, moral, and political). Following that, we will read and analyze prominent works of world literature from different literary traditions – Russian, German, Urdu, and French – that show a deep philosophical engagement with the problem of nihilism in its moral and political dimensions. All readings are in English.

• Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, 1862.
• Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What is to be Done?, 1863.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, 1864.
• Irvin Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession, 2010.
• Muhammad Iqbal, Shikwa, (Complaint), 1909.
• Muhammad Iqbal, Jawab-i-Shikwa, (Answer to the Complaint), 1913.
• Albert Camus, The Plague, 1942.

• Julian L. Ross, “Philosophy and Literature”, in Philosophy in Literature, (Syracuse University Press, 1949), 1-12
• Margaret Holland, “Can Fiction be Philosophy?”, Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, 1998. https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lite/LiteHoll.htm
• Olive Senior, “Literature is Political because we are political animals”, April 29, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/29/olive-senior-literature-political 
• Owen Flanagan, “It All Comes Down to Feelings”, June 11, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/books/review/strange-order-of-things-antonio-damasio.html
• Joshua Foa Dienstag, “Nihilism”, in Encyclopedia of Political Theory, (California: Sage Publications, 2010), pp. 979-980.
• Donald A. Crosby, “Types of Nihilism”, in The Specter of the Absurd: Sources and Criticisms of Modern Nihilism, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988), pp. 8-36.
• Simon Critchley, “Preamble: Travels in Nihilon”, in Very Little … Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature, 2004, 1-15.
• Michael Allen Gillespie, “Nihilism in the 19^th Century: From Absolute Subjectivity to Superhumanity”, in The Edinburgh Critical History of Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, Ed. Allison Stone, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2011, pp. 278-293.
• Sasha St. John Murphy, “The Debate around Nihilism in 1860s Russian Literature”, Slovo 28.2 (2016): 48-68.
• Keiji Nishitani, “Nihilism in Russia”, “Bazarov’s Nihilism – Fathers and Sons”, in The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, 127-139.
• Ivan Turgenev, “Apropos of Fathers and Sons”, 133-138.
• Geoffrey Clive, “Romanticism and Anti-Romanticism in the Nihilism of Bazarov”, The Christian Scholar (1962): 215-229.
• Kathryn Feuer, “Fathers and Sons: Fathers and Children”, in Harold Bloom, Ivan Turgenev, 2003, 23-37.
• Douwe Fokkema, “Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? and Dostoevsky’s Dystopian Foresight”, in Perfect Worlds: Utopian Fiction in China and the West, Amsterdam University Press. (2011), 211-232.
• Freydis, “Historical Nihilism”, 2011, https://www.rhnet.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=5007&dataid=24358&FileName=nihilism%20and%20existentialism%20overview.pdf
• Richard Pevera, “Introduction,” in Notes from Underground, iii-xvi.
• Keiji Nishitani, “Nihilism as Contemplation – Notes from Underground”, in The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, 139-156.
• Joseph Frank, “Nihilism and Notes from Underground”, The Sewanee Review 69.1 (1961): 1-33.
• Janko Lavrin, “A Note on Nietzsche and Dostoevsky”, The Russian Review 28.2 (1969): 160-170.
• M. A. Gillespie, “Nietzsche and the Anthropology of Nihilism”, Nietzschse-Studien, Vol. 28, 1999, 141-155.
• Bernard Reginster, “Nihilism” in The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 21-53.
• Shane Weller, “Absolute Devaluation: Friedrich Nietzsche” in Literature, Philosophy, Nihilism: The Uncanniest of Guests, 2008, 11-35.
• Feyzullah Yılmaz, “Overcoming Nihilism through Sufism: An Analysis of Iqbal’s Article on Abdulkarim al-Jili”
• Muhammad Iqbal, “Islam and Mysticism”, in Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, ed. Latif Ahmed Sherwani, Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 2009, 154-156.
• Muhammad Iqbal, “Muslim Democracy”, in Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, ed. Latif Ahmed Sherwani, Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 2009, 157.
• Muhammad Iqbal, “Our Prophet’s Criticism of Contemporary Arabian Poetry”, in Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, ed. Latif Ahmed Sherwani, Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 2009, 157-159.
• Muhammad Iqbal, “Nietzsche and Jalal-ud-Din Rumi”, in Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, ed. Latif Ahmed Sherwani, Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 2009, 161.
• Muhammad Iqbal, “The Inner Synthesis of Life”, in Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, ed. Latif Ahmed Sherwani, Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 2009, 162.
• Ashley Woodward, “Camus and Nihilism”, Sophia 50.4 (2011): 543-559.
• Albert Camus, “Introduction”, “The Rebel”, “Metaphysical Rebellion”, in The Rebel, 6-21p.
• Albert Camus, “Nietzsche and Nihilism”, in The Rebel, 9p.
• Albert Camus, “Beyond Nihilism”, in The Rebel, 3p.
• Sean Illing, “Between Nihilism and Transcendence: Camus's Dialogue with Dostoevsky”, The Review of Politics 77.2 (2015): 217-242.