The Human Person as Neighbour: Towards a Philosophy and Theology of Hospitality (AP9200Y)

Content

Neighbours have been represented by images ranging from the monster and alien, to strangers or friends. This transdisciplinary unit explores the shifts in understanding the human person in the context of the category of the neighbour as these images overlap with, and are consequential for, conceiving of ‘the self’, responsible political/moral decision-making and action, and the nature of sameness and difference as political categories. Attention is paid to associated themes such as ‘gift’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘love’, ‘hospitality’, and ‘democracy’.

Learning outcomes

Unit sequence

1xAP, or CT unit

Pedagogy

asynchronous lectures and synchronous tutorials

Indicative Bibliography

• Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1976).
• Braidotti, Rosi. Posthuman Feminism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022).
• Brown, Wendy. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019).
  
• Butler, Judith and Worms, Frédéric. The Livable and the Unlivable (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023).
  
• Derrida, Jacques. Hospitality, Volume I. Edited by Pascale-Anne Brault and Peggy Kamuf. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023).
• Kearney, Richard and Fitzpatrick, Melissa. Radical Hospitality: From Thought to Action (New York: Fordham University Press, 2021)
• Mouffe, Chantal. For A Left Populism (London and New York: Verso, 2018).
  
• Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology : Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Trans. George Schwab (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985).
• Žižek, Slavoj, Santner, Eric, and Reinhard, Kenneth. The Neighbour: Three Inquiries in Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
• Žižek, Slavoj. Zero Point (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025).

Assessment