We will read a number of philosophical and literary texts ranging from the fifth century BC to the present. We will be examining how the concept of war and the art of strategy have developed from the Chinese sage Sun Tsu to the great continental strategist of the 19th century von Clausewitz. The literary portraits of war that we will be dealing with will be analyzed with regard to the idea of these thinkers. In doing this, we will also be looking at the specific issues, historical, psychological, autobiographical, that these literary works are concerned with. This course will also be interested in the question of why wars have been such a privileged subject in literature and how the art of military strategy can be compared with the art of writing. Readings will include the following: Sun Tsu, The Art of War, J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens (selections), Carl v. Clausewitz, On War (selections), S. Freud, “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” and “Why War?” G. Glaubert, Salambo, E. Junger, The Storm of Steel, J. Swift, The Battle of the Books, S. Crane, The Red Badge of Courage.
Professor Rodolphe Gasché, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature studied philosophy and comparative literature in Munich, Berlin, and Paris. He holds an MA and PhD in philosophy from the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany). Besides translating major works by Derrida and Lacan into German and publishing numerous articles in a variety of scholarly journals, he has published nine books: Die hybride Wissenschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1973), System and Metaphorik in der Philosophie von Georges Bataille (Bern: Lang, 1978), The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard, 1986), Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge: Harvard, 1994), The Wild Card of Reading: On Paul de Man (Harvard, 1998), Of Minimal Things: Studies on the Notion of Relation (Stanford, 1999), The Idea of Form: Rethinking Kant’s Aesthetics (Stanford, 2003), The Honor of Thinking: Critique, Theory, Philosophy (Stanford, 2007), Views and Interviews: On ‘Deconstruction’ in America (The David Group, Publishers, 2007). A new book, Europe, or The Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept, is scheduled for publication with Stanford in 2008. His interests concern nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature, critical theory, and its relation to continental philosophy since early romanticism. Before coming to Buffalo, he taught at the Freie Universität, Berlin and the Johns Hopkins University.