Event Timeslots (1)
Tuesday
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This course is taught en bloc. For dates and times, please see the entry on eCampus. Mental distress and mental illness can be investigated as biological, neurological, psychological, social, or cultural phenomena. In this seminar, we discuss current philosophical approaches to the definition of mental disorders, and examine the subjective experience of mental illness as a privileged object of analysis.
The seminar is composed of two parts. First, we will familiarize ourselves with foundational philosophical debates on mental disorders. We will discuss different approaches to, and different definitions of, mental disorders focusing in particular on the opposition between naturalist, normativist, and phenomenological accounts. In the second part, we will shift the focus to the question: what is it like to suffer from a certain mental condition? More specifically, we will look into the application of the phenomenological method to the study of specific psychopathological conditions, such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, and dementia.
Literature: The reading list will be provided on Moodle before the start of the course.
Language of Instruction: English.