How do different thinkers construe the relation of the formal regimen of philosophy and the subjective or affective capacities through which our experience is constituted empirically and materially? Does the "history of philosophy" preclude an autobiography of the senses? If there are alternatives to formalism, can they be theoretical?

In this seminar, I would like to consider how theoretical talk about the nature of the psyche leads us to equate it with the mind and whether or not we are justified in accepting this equation. This seminar will have two basic concerns. In the first place, we will look to Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche and Derrida to get a sense of how these thinkers rely upon the form-matter distinction in their philosophy and in their theories of the aesthetic. In the second place, we will challenge the use of philosophy and its tradition in establishing and maintaining such rigid dichotomies. To work against this assumption we will attempt to locate in our reading of these philosophical texts affective registers that are conventionally assumed to belong to genres such as lyric and tragedy. Starting with the assumption that Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus is the paradigm, explicitly or implicitly, for Aristotle's Poetics, Kant's Critique of Judgment and Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy , we will consider how Aristotle's notion of the form-matter dichotomy is reconstituted, beginning with his Poetics, as a much less rigidly individuated distinction between action and the passions. From here, we will consider how this practical but much less distinct and determinate division of experience and its possibilities becomes, subsequently, an increasingly uncertain ground of identity in Kant's third Critique and, finally, in Nietzsche. Appearing first in Aristotle's ancillary aesthetic discourse, the passions, especially those of tragedy, grow louder and louder until they are recognized as such by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy . We might here consider the consequences of the extreme philosophical formulations of the Romantic aesthetic that we find in Nietzsche for the politics of Romantics with similar aesthetics (such as Shelley.) Does Shelley invoke metaphysics to rescue the possibility of politics? From here we return to formalism with the very Aristotelian critique of Aristotle in Derrida's "White Mythology." We shall also consider whether or not Derrida, in his "Parergon," is too Aristotelian to pull off an effective critique of Kant. Can he really read the Critique as beautiful? How might it be possible to pass such an aesthetic judgment? On the other hand, is it possible to think theory without an aesthetic? Throughout this investigation we will have to consider whether or not or to what extent we can regard any of these philosophers as cut and dried formalists. Our critique will be abetted by insights from the theorists in our supplemental reading list. This list is subject to alteration: suggestions welcomed.

We might consider some of the following questions. If Sappho, Nietzsche and Shelley are up front with their feelings, what about Aristotle and Derrida? Where are the affects in Kant? Is he misunderstood? Can we distinguish form from passion in Plato? What are the affinities of Kantian and Platonic theories of desire? Do the affects have modes of expression which are not accessible to the formal distinctions of theoretical discourses? Do the passions have practical and ethical grounds  and consequences that can be felt but are theorized only tangentially?

and Nicomachean Ethics.

Sign and Play."