Fall 2003 Course Descriptions
Philosophy 303.01
MEANING AND IDENTITY
M 3:10-5:00
José Medina
MEANING AND IDENTITY. In this seminar we will study different aspects of the formation and transformation of personal and collective identities through language. Among the central issues we will discuss are the following: how explicit and implicit forms of censorship operate in discursive practices, how the individual and the linguistic community are related to one another, and how social norms can be criticized and subverted in and through discursive practices. The central figures of the seminar will be Mead, Wittgenstein, Bourdieu, and Butler. We will also read selected papers from the contemporary literature on meaning and identity.
Philosophy 217.01
METAPHYSICS
T/R 1:10-2:25
Jeffrey Tlumak
Metaphysical questions arise in pursuit of virtually every branch of philosophical inquiry and reflective living. We will explore powerful, alternative metaphysical visions of ourselves, of our natural and social environments, and of realms beyond familiar experience, and discuss their implications for morality, politics, religion, science, and meaningful living generally. We will study three books and one essay. Heimir Geirsson and Michael Losonsky's Beginning Metaphysics includes classical and contemporary readings on freedom and responsibility, mind, value, causality, God, universality, and the nature and practical significance of metaphysics itself. Richard Taylor's Metaphysics adds to the discussion of several of these themes, but also introduces new foci such as the nature of space, time, persons, fate, and life's meaning. Owen Flanagan's The Problem of the Soul articulates and claims to reconcile humanistic and scientific approaches to ourselves, preserving moral responsibility and personal freedom within an empirically sound view of the mind. And Thomas Nagel's 'Subjective and Objective' diagnoses the source of metaphysical (and more broadly, philosophical) challenges in terms of our inability to reconcile subjective and objective points of view. Class format will most typically be a combination of short lecture and topical development through discussion. Course requirements are three (on average 6-8 page) papers.
Philosophy 105.01
INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS
MWF 12:10-1:00
Robert Talisse
A critical inquiry into questions of the natures of good and evil, right and wrong, and virtue and vice. Readings will be drawn from both classical and contemporary sources, including Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Judith Thomson, Virginia Held, Peter Singer, and Thomas Hill. We shall survey theoretical and applied issues.
Philosophy 294A.01
SEL.TOPIC: PLATO'S REPUBLIC
M 2:10-4:00
Robert Talisse and Henry Teloh
A close reading Plato's Republic, supplemented with relevant contemporary readings. The professors team-teaching this course agree about very little; thus the course will likely address fundamental questions of methodology and interpretation in a lively manner. Students will hence not only learn the Republic, but will also engage in current disputes about how to read Plato.
Philosophy 115.12W
FRESHMAN SEMINAR: CREATION AND EVOLUTION (W)
T/R 9:35-10:50
Professor L. E. Goodman
This course explores the lively controversy over creation and evolution that has continued since Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in 1859. Besides that landmark work itself, we read the account of creation in Genesis and will assay the similarities and differences in assumptions and implications between these two stories. After reading a tract by Henry Morris, a leader of the Creation Science movement, and advance copy from Professor Goodman's book in progress, God and Evolution, we will study some critiques of creation science by biologists and philosophers, and conclude with the religious interpretation of evolution offered in the 20th century paleontologist-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's classic The Phenomenon of Man.
Besides surveying the creation-evolution controversy and the underlying value issues, the seminar aims to help students hone their critical and self-critical skills in evaluating and developing a line of argument. Particular attention is paid to the levels at which a text can be read and the kinds of discourse we may encounter-rhetorical, polemical, celebratory, scientific, reductive, speculative, mythic, historical, or philosophical. Enhancement of writing skills is a key aim of the course. Hence the progression from precis writing to analysis of argumentation, to exegesis of a text, and development of a sustained argument.
Philosophy 332.03
SPINOZA SEMINAR
T 3:10-5:00
Prof. L. E. Goodman
In many ways Spinoza is the thinker who comes closest to fulfilling the ideal of Western philosophy, vindicating the intuitive sense that at bottom reality must be one, while paying due deference to human experience: the natural order, the facts of consciousness, the dynamic of the emotions, the demands of thought and action, the idea of God.
Part of Spinoza's achievement was to find ways of overcoming many of the deep oppositions that still beset the philosophical enterprise oppositions of the one and the many, freedom and determinism, body and mind, God and nature, right and power, thought and emotion. Spinoza builds syntheses where others see only antinomies. He does this not by wishful thinking but by bolder and more rigorous conceptual work than perhaps any other philosopher has been able to accomplish. Often he will fiercely advocate one side in a partisan dispute only to move on to rehabilitate the other by a brilliant reconceptualization, dissolving familiar dichotomies and showing us how to move forward on our own.
This seminar will examine Spinoza's philosophical project and assay his contributions to our own philosophical understanding and our work as philosophers. Besides the Ethics we will study the political and exegetical works and the early writings on the good life, knowledge and doubt, and the Cartesian philosophy.
HONS 181.28
UNDERSTANDING OTHER CULTURES
MWF 12:10-1:00
José Medina
What are the problems and obstacles that we face in understanding other cultures? In our multicultural society and in the globalized world of the 21st century it has become crucial to determine how different cultures can understand each other and engage in a dialogue that makes possible not only their peaceful coexistence, but also their rich life in common. In this seminar we will study the conditions of possibility of the dialogue between cultures, and we will examine how to identify and repair possible distortions in the understanding of one culture from the perspective of another. We will read philosophers and social scientists with conflicting views about the best way to achieve mutual understanding between cultures. We will pay particular attention to the debate between universalism and relativism, which focuses on the following questions: Are there universal standards of rationality that apply to all cultures? Or should we understand and evaluate each culture according to its own standards? Is there anything universal in our knowledge and moral values? Are there limits to intercultural understanding and insurmountable obstacles for the dialogue between cultures?
Philosophy 210.01
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
MWF 10:10-11:00
Henry Teloh
In ancient philosophy we study the Pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato, and Aristotle. Among the questions we address are: "What is the nature of the cosmos?" "Is virtue wisdom?" and "What is a good community?" We will also focus on the character of Socrates, and in connection with this we will read Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols.
Philosophy 252.01
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
MWF 11:10-12:00
Henry Teloh
We will study modern individualism, and the theories of justice conjoined with it. Then we will investigate libertarianism, liberalism, and socialism as examples of individualism. We will also look at positive and negative rights. Finally, we will analyze communitarian and radical democratic responses to individualism.
Philosophy 247.01
KIERKEGAARD AND NIETZSCHE
TR - 2:35-3:50
David Wood
Kierkegaard was a deeply troubled man, tormented by religious doubt, who waged a lonely campaign against the shallowness and hypocrisy of his day. For his influential analyses of self-deception, faith and despair he has been called the father of existentialism. Kierkegaard was an intensely religious man at war with Christendom and the Church of his day. Nietzsche on the other hand was an avowed and militant atheist, asking how man could find meaning and value after the 'death of God'. In recent culture wars, he has been reviled as a nihilist who threatens our deepest values. And yet no-one has done more to describe and diagnose the nihilism of the West. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche look as if they are opposed to each other at every turn - one seeking a religious solution, the other abandoning religion. The truth, however, is more interesting and more surprising. This course looks at key texts from these extraordinary thinkers.
Philosophy 260.01
TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY
The Fate of Freedom
TR - 11:00-12:15
David Wood
There is no more central value than that of Freedom. And yet for decades it has been attacked on all sides - by postmodern ridicule, by ideological manipulation, and by philosophical neglect. This course will explore the ways in which some key 20th C continental thinkers have both dealt with and avoided the question of freedom. And it will offer a deconstructive rehabilitation of its philosophical importance. We will look at texts by Sartre, Heidegger, Marcuse, Nancy, Foucault and others.
Philosophy 294A.02
SELECTED TOPICS: W.E.B. DU BOIS
T/R 1:10-2:25
Lucius Outlaw, Jr.
This course will involve close readings and critical examinations of selected writings by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois included in W.E.B. Du Bois: Writings. In particular, we will explore his arguments for particular approaches to: the identification, characterization, and understanding of African and African-descended people; the elimination of various forms of oppression, and of problems related to the oppression, of African-descended people in the United States, especially, in Africa and the African diaspora more generally, and Du Bois's critical analyses of the historically significant persons and peoples in United States of America and of the nation's situation and prospects.
Philosophy 115W.26
FRSEM: THE NATURE OF THE POLITICAL: ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY (W)
T/R 1:10-2:25
Idit Dobbs-Weinstein
The purpose of the seminar is an in-depth introduction to the fundamental concepts of political philosophy and their historical transformations. More precisely, the seminar aims is to develop an appreciation of the difference between politics understood as a profession and the "political" as the fundamental space (institutions and practices) that structures human life. The course will bring to light the radical transformations, both concrete and conceptual, that have taken place from the ancient Greek polis (city-state) to the modern nation state, the understanding of which is necessary for an informed consideration of the challenges posed to its legitimacy since the end of the Second World War. We shall explore how political rhetoric, practices and institutions at different historical periods are informed by radically different, complex, "extra-political" considerations, both theoretical and practical, ranging from cosmology and theology, through the understanding of human nature, to political economy. As the course progresses, it will become evident how and why ancient institutions share little in common with modern ones, most often only a name, e.g., "democracy." It will also become evident why the pursuit of democracy is never complete.
In order to help the students orient themselves with respect to the central questions addressed by "political philosophy," we shall begin by reading some of the most significant documents that found American political life, the radically different interpretations of which is amply manifest in current legal and political debates.
Philosophy 240.01
AESTHETICS
T/R 9:35-10:50
Gregg Horowitz
In this class we will use four central questions to focus an investigation of modern aesthetic theories: What is taste? What is beauty? What is art? What is art for? Our aim is to explore how the capacity for taste develops, how beauty differs from other qualities of objects, what makes something a work of art, and why we value art. We will read works by major philosophers from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries who thought systematically about these matters: Hume, Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud. Finally, we will also try to understand why it is that thinkers of this period first put these questions in good enough shape that we can try to answer them. In other words, we will ask if there is something about the modern world that makes the fate of taste, beauty, and art a matter in special need of philosophical attention. No background in philosophy is required.
Philosophy 115.07
ETHICS AND THE PROFESSIONS
T/R 2:35-3:50
Stuart G. Finder, Ph.D.
e-mail: stuart.finder@vanderbilt.edu
This course is a philosophical investigation into common ethical issues facing professionals, their communities and those who receive their services. As such, the principle aim of this course is to help students develop the necessary critical and reflective skills with which to examine the ethical dimensions and dynamics associated with professional life in contemporary society.
In relation to this aim, two clusters of concerns associated with professions serve as the focus for the course: those addressing the general interplay between ethics and professions, and those more specifically focused on critical issues in individual professions (for example, engineering, law, medicine, teaching, and so on).
While focused on ethical issues in the professions, this course is also an exploration of ethics more generally, especially as revealed and articulated in everyday moral life. Accordingly, the second principle aim of this course is to foster the development of critical and reflective skills associated with moral life in general. In this light, students will be encouraged to pay attention to the moral complexity and dynamics associated with the multiplicity of relationships which characterize most social and personal interactions.
Philosophy 115W.13
FRESHMAN SEMINAR: ETHICS OF LIFE AND DEATH
T/R 11:00-12:15
Russell McIntire
Practically every medical decision has an ethical dimension, especially those that occur at the very edges of life itself. In this seminar we will focus on the cluster of medical ethical issues surrounding abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. As medical technology advances, our questions change from "Can we do this?" to "Should we do this?" And as the social and political climate presses the public debates, it is increasingly important that the discussion of these emotionally charged issues be informed by the most carefully reasoned considerations we can offer. Every effort will be made to assure that this seminar experience will offer the opportunity to explore important contributions to the conversation, to practice articulating arguments in support of difficult positions, and to strengthen argumentative discussion and writing skills.
