The meaning of usefulness: a philosophical perspective
Etablissement : ESPOL European School of Political and Social Sciences
Langue : Anglais
Formation(s) dans laquelle/lesquelles le cours apparait :
Période : S3
Being useful appears like a value per se: it would be an absolute, an ideal giving meaning to a life, a job, a public policy, a political project. Usefulness has been defined as a good in itself, and its negative, uselessness, as a criticism that devalues any object, especially any object in the political sphere. In contemporary times, the dividing line between useful and useless has come to be seen as a division between good and evil. But is this axis of division neutral? On what conceptual history does it rest?
In this seminar, we will seek to identify the sources that have fuelled the way in which, in a neoliberal context, public interest has become the equivalent of the Public Good, and the useless as the parasite that must be reduced, hunted down and annihilated. An analysis of the notions of liberalism, neoliberalism and new public management will be required for that.
Session 1 : General introduction : utility as key concept
Mandatory reading:
VALLELY Neil, Futilitarianism: Neoliberalism and the Production of Uselessness, Goldsmiths Press, London, 2021. 234 pp.
Plato, The Republic, VII 518 C
https://www.sciencetheearth.com/uploads/2/4/6/5/24658156/plato_-_the_republic.pdf
Session 2 : Public interest and the reason of State
Mandatory readings:
BOTERO Giovanni, The Reason of the State, Book 1
https://assets.cambridge.org/97811071/41827/frontmatter/9781107141827_frontmatter.pdf
HOBBES Thomas, The Leviathan, Chapters 13 and 14, https://philo-labo.fr/fichiers/Hobbes%20-%20L%C3%A9viathan%20(gutenberg).pdf
Additional reading:
MACHIAVELLI Niccolò, The Prince, Chapters 15 to 19
https://apeiron.iulm.it/retrieve/handle/10808/4129/46589/Machiavelli%2C%20The%20Prince.pdf
Oral presentation : Is the gift socially useless? (cf. Marcel Mauss)
Oral presentation : Are elderly people socially useless?
Session 3 : Biopolitics and the Foucauldian method
Mandatory readings:
FOUCAULT Michel, The Birth of Biopolitics, lesson of the 10th of January 1979
LAVAL Christian , DARDOT Pierre, The new way of the world: on liberal society, chapter 3
Oral presentation : “Be the best version of yourself : personal branding, a neoliberal conception of the self ?
Oral presentation : Is idleness a loss of time?
Session 4 : The Revolutionary path
Mandatory reading:
ROUSSEAU Jean-Jacques, Discourse on economic politics
In-class exam
Oral presentation : Tax the rich: are rich people a social burden?
Session 5 : The utilitarianism path
Mandatory readings:
LAVAL Christian , DARDOT Pierre, The new way of the world: on liberal society, chapter 4
BENTHAM Jeremy, Method and Leading Features of an Institute of Political Economy (including finance) considered not only as a science but as an art (1800-1804),in Jeremy Bentham’s Economic Writings.
Additional reading:
CHIAPELLO Eve, BOLTANSKI Luc, The new spirit of capitalism, chapters 4 and 5
Oral presentation : New public management, a productivist vision of politics ?
Oral presentation : Defending social rights with statistics : are numbers the best argument ?
Session 6 : proposals to re-think utility with an ecological perspective
Mandatory reading:
PLUMWOOD Val « Nature in the Active Voice », Australian Humanities Review, 1er mai 2009, n° 46. http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2009/05/01/nature-in-the-active-voice
LATOUR BRUNO, We have never been Modern, chapter 2
In-class exam
Oral presentation : What is a bullshit job ?
