Amy E. Wendling                                                                                                                                                         Office Hours

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Please email through ANGEL course system[1]                                                                                                                           

 

Philosophy of Love and Sex

Philosophy 014

Second Summer Session 2005

MW 6:00pm-9:30 pm

 

 

Course Description:

 

We study the changing philosophical significance of physically intimate human relationships during different time periods in Western history.  For the Greeks, erotic sexuality between men was seen as a key political force in a well-ordered public realm.  The Christian mystics often characterized their private relationships with God in the terms of erotic sexuality (and in texts far more likely than those of the Marquis de Sade to make the contemporary reader blush).  In contrast to both Greek and Christian sexuality, the Victorian era relegated sexual expression to the private realm of the reproductive family, the consequences of which are outlined in Sigmund Freud.  Finally, the twentieth century has organized some of its discourses of political liberation around sexual freedom.  We ask if the connection between freedom and transgressive sexual expression is authentic, including addressing feminist critiques of the concept of “Romance.”  At the end of the course, you should be able speculate about what remainders from these systems are implicit in contemporary thinking about love and sex.

  

Required Texts:

 

Plato’s Symposium

Luce Irigaray’s “Sorcerer Love”

Foucault’s The History of Sexuality

Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

Bataille’s Story of the Eye

Califia’s Public Sex

Shulamith Firestone’s “Culture of Romance”

 

NOTE: Copies of all texts are available in the library’s reserve reading room

 

 

Course Requirements:

 

1. Class Participation  – 20%

 

You will be required to express your philosophical ideas verbally in the class itself as a demonstration of your preparation, learning, and development as a philosopher.  If you are an agoraphobe, this will be your chance to work on developing the skills of self-expression in public.  If you are an inveterate agoraphobe, please come to discuss it with me, but know that it will probably affect this portion of your grade.  Conversely, if you are especially vocal in the classroom, this portion of your grade can be damaged by inability to share the floor with others. 

 

2.  Daily Reading Responses – 30%

 

A written assignment for the assigned reading is due on each MONDAY.  To be accepted for credit, these must be delivered on paper by you to the classroom at the beginning of the period; I do not accept work delivered electronically.  If you have a university verified absence, simply turn in a copy of the university paperwork that verifies your absence stapled to your make up work the following time the course meets, and I will correct any discrepancies in the attendance record automatically.   

 

On most days, I will simply check your Monday assignments to verify your attendance.  However, at random, I will grade three of them.  Each will count for 10% of your grade.  Your Monday assignments should be the equivalent of one typed double spaced page, though I always accept handwritten work.  Quality is more important than quantity, and quantity can hurt you if it comes at the expense of substance.

 

The template for these assignments is as follows:

 

1.  Formulate a substantive paragraph that summarizes the author’s main points and general argument.

 

2.  Look up two words that you did not know from the reading and give their definition.  These could be individual words or historical referents (e.g.   Charles Darwin, Cambrian, distal, eukaryotic, epistemology).  For the philologists among us who already know what everything means, the roots of the words must be looked up and the pieces out of which they are forged (Greek, Latin, and otherwise) illuminated.  The genealogies of the words are found at the end of the entry in any good dictionary.  These roots really make up a part of a good definition anyway.  Another option to use if you feel as though you know all the words is to look up an already-familiar word and see if there are additional nuances to its meaning.  Or look up a word’s historical sense (e.g. the definition of the word “invert” in a dictionary from 1924).

 

3. Critically respond to the piece.  This could take several forms: pose challenging questions to the author and say what you think she or he might say in response, situate the reading in relation to the course as a whole, or compare and contrast the day’s reading to arguments from earlier in the semester.  Be especially careful that this section is distinct in content from the summary section.

 

3.   Final Paper or Exam  – 50%

 

You will write a paper in which you will be asked to demonstrate your knowledge of material learned in the course.  The suggested length of the paper is five to seven pages.  We will discuss its contents later in the semester.

 

Daily Schedule (Will be followed in all sessions apart from initial meeting)

 

6-6:30 pm Small group discussions in response to assigned questions

 

6:30 pm-7pm Large group discussion

 

7:00-7:45 pm Lecture

 

7:45-8:00 pm  BREAK

 

8:00pm-9:30  Continued Lecture and/or audiovisual material related to course readings

 

Schedule of Readings and Assignments

 

W, 6/29           Syllabus Discussion; Meet the Students; Small Groups Assigned; Lecture on Greek Sexuality and Introduction to                                                                                      Plato’s Symposium 

                       

M, 7/4              NO CLASS: July holiday

W, 7/6             Symposium, pages 1-31 

 

M, 7/11            Symposium, 31-54, and Luce Irigaray’s “Sorcerer Love” from ANGEL (short paper due)

W, 7/13           Freud, Prefaces, Introduction, and Essay I: The Sexual Aberrations      

 

M, 7/18            Freud, Essay II: Infantile Sexuality  and Essay III: The Transformations of Puberty and Summary (short paper due)

W, 7/20           Foucault, Parts One and Two

 

M, 7/25            Foucault, Parts Three and Four (short paper due)                                 

W, 7/27           Foucault, Part Five.  Bataille’s Story of the Eye, first half

 

M, 8/1              Bataille’s Story of the Eye, second half and “The Language of Flowers” essay from Visions of Excess (short paper

due)                                                                

W, 8/3             Califia, Part One: Sexual Outlaws Vs. The Sex Police

 

M, 8/8              Califia, Part Two: Among Us, Against Us: Right Wing Feminism

W, 8/10           Califia, Part Three: Please CHOOSE five essays from Sluts in Utopia; Shulamith Firestone’s “Culture of Romance”

from ANGEL

 

Course Policies

 

Penn State welcomes students with disabilities into the University’s educational programs.  If you have a disability-related need for modifications or reasonable accommodations in this course, contact the Office for Disability Services, ODS, located at 116 Boucke Building at 1-814-863-1807 (V/TTY).  For further information regarding ODS please visit their website at www.equity.psu.edu/ods.  Notify your instructor as early in the semester as possible regarding the need for modification or reasonable accommodation.