Free University of Berlin

In this class, students learn about the characteristics of social ventures that are driven by a dual mission: a strong social, societal and/or ecological purpose alongside their economic mission. The class invites students to reflect how social and economic purpose can be aligned in their ventures and how their own personal values can drive the various blocks of a venture creation process. To reflect and build upon the individual set of values, we are using the method 'Theory U’ by Otto Scharmer. To that end, students learn about, discuss, and reflect upon social and economic purpose during ideation, team building and business modelling. This knowledge is applied to a business idea that supports both the social and economic mission of the founding team.

This seminar seeks to provide an overview of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. It starts by looking at Schopenhauer’s central work – The World as Will and Representation (1819), touching upon each of the central themes found therein: epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, and ethics. Subsequently, we will partially mirror the themes covered in studying Schopenhauer, this time providing Nietzsche’s take on these. We will approach Nietzsche’s work initially by looking at his On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) – one of his clearest and most systematically argued work. We will find that this not only provides insight on morality but will provide a good foundation for exploring Nietzsche on topics such as art, truth or the will to power. The final part of the seminar will be student driven. Three alternative options have been prepared, covering either A. Nietzsche on Knowledge, Causality and Truth; B. Nietzsche on Art; or C. Nietzsche on Nihilism and The Will to Power. Students will be asked to make a joint decision as to which one of these three topics they will choose for us to cover. This way, in addition to the topic of morality we will be able to cover in some detail Nietzsche’s take on one of the other topics that we explored at the beginning of the seminar from Schopenhauer’s perspective.

Depression is a painful existential situation that seems to be quite widespread in our contemporary capitalist, ultra-individualistic societies. Recent and current interrelated crises, as for example the financial crisis, the climate crisis and the threat of a global war, seem to have exacerbated the phenomenon. But what does it mean exactly to be depressed, or to live with depression? How could we better conceive of it: as mental and bodily disorder, condition, disposition, mode of experience, habit, …? What kind of relations – to oneself, to fellow human beings, and to the world – does depression foster and is fed by? If one agrees to consider it as a pathology, is it just an individual or also a social, collective pathology? What does constitute its ‘pathological’ (i.e. ‘wrong’) character? Does depression also entail ‘positive’ aspects? This course follows various paths for developing a critical philosophy of depression, an undertaking that finds itself, in the current philosophical landscape, at its outset. Note that the preposition “of” has a double meaning: on the one hand, we will study and articulate philosophical, conceptual and also nonconceptual tools for understanding what depression is; on the other hand, we will explore the cognitive (and affective) resources that the depressive experience disclose and unleash, what their epistemological, ethical and political values can be. The seminar aims at addressing and discussing the topic by drawing upon a vast range of theoretical and literary resources, from psychoanalysis to philosophy, from sociology to literature.

We live in an age of multiple crisis where basic gender equality is as much under threat as the earth’s climate. Why not combine different approaches to think through the looming Armageddon in search for alternatives to humanity’s demise – or at least a better understanding of it? The course uses Cara Daggett conceptualisation of Petromasculinity (2018) as a starting point to explore the intersection of Gender Studies and Ecocriticism. We will discuss the dualism of culture and nature uncovering the importance of gender in our perception of these two organizing concepts. From there, we will turn to Energy Humanities and Ecofeminism to understand how the extraction of non-renewable energies relates to discourses of The End of Man (Joanna Zylinska 2018) and see where that path will lead us. The primary texts for the course will come predominantly from African, South Asian, and Southeast Asian creatives and where not easily accessible will be made available through a course reader.

This lecture introduces and analyzes the different aspects categorized under social psychology. Some topics include social cognition, aggression versus prosocial behavior, group dynamics, and how attitudes develop and vary. Additionally, students will learn how to analyze different studies and theories and apply them to themselves and other real life scenarios.

How does constrained writing paradoxically open up language? What overt and covert strategies have authors used to create work that is highly formal but also highly playful? The Paris-based literary movement OuLiPo has been the headquarters of constrained writing since its inception in the middle of the last century. The group is well-known for writers like Georges Perec and Italo Calvino but has also had a considerable presence in English, from members like Harry Matthews and Ian Monk to the Feminist OuLiPo collective, Foulipo. In this seminar we will focus on OuLiPo and OuLiPo-adjacent output in English; readings include Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature edited by Warren F. Motte.

This seminar course will engage with key readings and positions in the wider field of anthropology of ethics and morality as they have been shaped and discussed within and beyond anthropology. We shall be engaged in critical readings of programmatic texts and different kinds of approaches, focusing in particularly on the readings of ethnographies (as articles, or key chapters). Readings will include work on the ‘ethnography of moralities’, and particularly approaches focusing on the workings of ethics in ordinary everyday life (e.g. Lambek, Das, Keane, Fassin), as well as the anthropology of Islam (e.g. Mahmood; Hirschkind; Marsden, Schielke), and overall conceptual approaches (e.g. Laidlaw; Faubion). We may also engage with earlier writings (to grasp the history of intellectual trajectories), and with particular writings on human sharing, suffering and persevering, trying to assess what we can gain from here. Critical readings of these approaches and their critical reception, particularly within the field of interpretive and existentialist anthropology, will guide our course discussions – which seek to address aspects of ethnographic description and critical conceptualization in a balanced manner. Thereby, we will also pursue recent questions about the integration of ethical perspectives and/or moral universes from the global South into theorizing (asking how much/ how far this may have been done); and we will consider decolonial demands for theory to work with and be built on concepts from the global South (e.g. Menon 2022). Which kind of concepts, and what kind of writers from there could enrich, enhance, or re-focus recent approaches and debates in an adequate manner? These are open questions, for critical and open-minded engagements in close readings.