First Posting: A Point of Departure

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"To be human is to experience fear, but what is it exactly that makes us fearful?"

From the book jacket of Yi Fu Tuan's Landscapes of Fear (1979) Pantheon Books.

This however may be the wrong question as a point of departure?

Later the book jacket promises that Yi Fu Tuan will "explore the ways in which authorities creates landscapes of terror to instill fear in their own populations; and he probes that most basic of all contradictions between the need for human security and the fear of human nature."

So we shall see.

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If it's of interest, I see some writers have found Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception as a foundational work in characterizing and understanding "fear". I own this text in what I think is the standard translation from the French by Colin Smith. I don't think there are other competing translations. Never asked, but if you have facility with French, then that would be the way to go. I'm not pushing this, but, if you think it's a direction you'd be interested in? Then I'd read Merleau-Ponty with you. I've never read it entirely. But it's a major investment in time and effort (not really compatible with the kind of literature review we've outlined for this Independent Study). It may be that after this this term, only if you thought reading this was it was useful? we might spend an entire semester just on Merleau-Ponty. The ISBN is 0415045568 Copies are inexpensive. Mine is paperback and published by Routledge.