Fall 2006 Course Descriptions

Phil 100.03
Jeff Edmonds
Intro to Philosophy
MWF 12:10-1:00

What is the proper relationship between human beings and the rest of the world? Is individual truth the only kind of truth? Can we talk about notions like "the good," "the beautiful," and "the true," or are these ideas purely subjective? We'll examine these questions and more by reading philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, William James, Thoreau, Foucault, and more.

Phil 100.04
Dom Eggert
Intro to Philosophy
MWF: 2:10-3:00

Who am I? What is the meaning of life? Where do human beings come from? How do I know what's right? What makes a society good and just? Do we have free will? Is there a God? What should I do with my life?

In Philosophy 100.04, we tackle the BIG questions, the ones that really matter. We'll read selections from modern novelists, scientists, ministers, and political leaders, in addition to classical texts from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, among others.

Even though we won't attain ultimate solutions to the major problems of human existence, we may just find that the search for answers offers its own rewards...

Phil 100.05
Zachary Vanderveen
Intro to Philosophy
TR: 11:00-12:15

This class will provide an introduction to a few common philosophical questions. Readings will be short and will cover a number of themes, but we will tie them together through the following questions: How do we know anything? How do we know ourselves? What is ethics? What is democracy? What is art? and What is the meaning of life? Philosophers should include: Kant, William James, Hume, Hunter S. Thompson, W.E.B. DuBois, Plato, Freud, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Sartre, John Dewey, Hobbes, Aristotle, Camus, Marx, Spike Lee, Sidney Hook, and Foucault.

Expected reading load is 30-50 pages a week. There will be three 4-5 page papers and a few short writing assignments. Every class will blow your mind.

Phil 105 TA section
Johanna Matocha
Ethics of Censorship

In this section, we will begin by looking at censorship from a straight-forward legal perspective, moving into psychoanalysis and the ways in which we censor ourselves and ultimately branching back out into the political and social with a broader understanding of the ways in which morality and normativity shape our lives and the role of critique therein as a central element in a flourishing life.

PHIL 115
Johnathan Neufeld
Music, Self, and Society
TR: 9:35 - 10:50

In this seminar, we will investigate a number of philosophical questions about music and musical meaning with an ear toward contemporary music that students actually listen to. Philosophy and music share an uneasy and sometimes turbulent relationship. Plato fears music's effect on the balance of soul and society. Friedrich Nietzsche celebrates music as a check on an overreaching Reason and enervating morality. Theodor Adorno sees in some modern music, but no popular music, a glimmer of hope for freedom within an ever more tightly administered world. A number of contemporary philosophers, following 19th century music critic Eduard Hanslick, argue that music itself does not really mean anything at all. What, if anything, can music tell us about ourselves and about our society? Are all of these questions simply mistakes resting on an over-intellectualized notion of what music is? No special knowledge of music is required, but we will do some listening that will be partially determined by the class's interests.

Phil 115F.01
Scott Finder
Ethics and the Professions
TR: 1:10-2:25

This course is a philosophical consideration of common ethical issues facing professionals, their communities, and those who receive their services. As such, the course's principle aim 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. Two clusters of concerns associated with professions serve as the specific focus: those addressing general interplay between ethics and professions, and those related to individual professions (for example, engineering, law, medicine, teaching, and so on). A secondary aim of the course is to foster 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.

Phil 115F.03
Susan Schoenbohm
Classical Conceptions of Living Well in Europe and Asia
TR: 11:00-12:15

In this course we will explore the question of what it means to live well as human beings. We will orient ourselves to this question by reading classical Greek and Asian texts -- texts that have provided major historical bases for contemporary thought. In these texts we will find original formulations of basic life questions with which many of us still wrestle today, such as, what do "goodness," "excellence," and "justice" mean? What do I have to do in order to live well? How are my efforts to live well connected to others' efforts? Understanding both the questions and classical thinkers' responses to them enables us to think about our own lives more deeply, to adopt or depart from whatever "wisdom" they may represent, and more deliberately and intelligently to assume responsibility for determining the quality of our lives.

Phil 115F.05
Jonathan Bremer
Green Cities
MWF: 10:10-11:00

In this course, we will apply ethical theories to urban environmental issues. It has long been a prevalent view that cities are environmentally unsustainable or "unfriendly," and historically, the modern urban planning movement originated from this perspective, committed as it was to ameliorate the overcrowded conditions and rampant disease characteristic of urban life in the nineteenth century. We will see, however, that some contemporary cities are environmentally sustainable in significant respects, and many other cities can and should be made to become that way. Making cities environmentally sustainable, further, is more than just planting trees, preserving green space, or establishing recycling programs. It is also about land use integration, participatory democracy, and social equity. To address these and related concerns, key topics for the course include interpretations of "nature" and "sustainability," human settlement patterns, democracy, economic sustainability, sprawl, environmental justice, and the implementation of urban environmental principles. Some authors whose works we will read are Garrett Hardin, Ian McHarg, Kevin Lynch, Richard Sennett, Mike Davis, and Carole Pateman. This course integrates ethical theory and environmental urban planning, and students in the seminar will actively contribute to this exciting field by engaging in class discussion, organizing a group presentation, and writing three original essays.

Phil 181
Jose Medina
Honors Seminar- Understanding Other Cultures
TR: 9:35-10:50

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 intercultural dialogue, 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 intercultural understanding. We will read texts in Multiculturalism, Post-Colonial Theory, and the debate between Universalism and Relativism.

Phil 202
Dr. Robert Talisse
Formal Logic and Applications
MWF: 1:10-2:00

A standard course in formal logic. We begin with the basics (validity and soundness, truth functions, truth tables, tests for various logical properties) and progress to derivations in sentence and predicate logic. Along the way, we confront a range of philosophical issues and problems occasioned by formal logic.

Phil 222
John Stuhr
American Philosophy
TR: 9:35-10:50

This course surveys important perspectives, ideas, and theories in the writings of major American philosophers. The course will focus on American pragmatism as developed in the work of Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead, and will examine pragmatism in the context of classical American philosophy more generally. In addition, the course will examine the larger intellectual and cultural context of American thought through reference to earlier intellectual traditions (for example, puritans, American enlightenment figures, and transcendentalists) and often neglected writers (for example, women writers such as Gilman and Addams, Native American oratory, and African American thinkers including DuBois and Locke). Finally, the course will examine recent work on American thought and culture that draws on pragmatism.

The course aims to provide an understanding of American philosophical traditions, the relation of American philosophy to the history of philosophy more generally, and the connection between American philosophy and American culture. In addition, and at least as importantly, the course seeks to provide an opportunity for students to reflect on the value and viability of American philosophy, especially pragmatism, in light of contemporary cultural issues.

PHIL 240
Aesthetics
Johnathan Neufeld
TR: 1:10-2:25

The leading accounts of the nature of art, the character of aesthetic experience, and the nature of artistic creation. The course will focus on the emergence of the emergence and development concepts of aesthetics and artistic autonomy in the 18th and 19th centuries. We will look at texts from Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Niezsche.

PHIL 246
Jose Medina
Philosophy of Language
TR: 1:10-2:25

This course is a survey of core issues in Philosophy of Language: communication, meaning, reference, interpretation, performativity, and the formation of identities and communities through language. We will read and discuss the writings on language of some of the most influential thinkers in contemporary philosophy, including Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Davidson, Derrida, Ricoeur, and Habermas. We will study how philosophical issues concerning language arise and are treated in different philosophical traditions.

Phil 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. He 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 than Nietzsche 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.

Phil 252
Dr. Robert Talisse
Social and Political Philosophy
MWF: 12:10-1:00

An examination of central issues and arguments in contemporary political theory concerning democracy, justice, liberty, rights, autonomy, pluralism, political justification, conflicts between individuals and collectivities, and the nature and scope of political authority.

Phil 254
Kevin Davis
Philosophy of Law
TR: 9:35-10:50

This course will address central problems in the contemporary philosophy of law, including the nature of law, law's relation to morality, theories of adjudication, and the conditions for holding people responsible under the law. We will consider debates over whether law must be justified by moral principles, how society should respond to violations of law, and the nature of reasoning used by judges when interpreting laws and deciding legal disputes.

We will also look at some particular issues in American law that reflect conflicts in beliefs about the purposes of law, including the appropriate scope of the freedom of expression, the nature of legal due process, and the meaning of equal protection under law.

The course format will be primarily discussion; we will use a variety of activities to talk about the readings, including some in-class presentations and debates.

Phil 301
John Stuhr
Teaching and Research Methods
T: 1:00-3:00

This seminar is intended for, required of, and limited to all first-year philosophy graduate students (and, in 2006 only, all second-year philosophy graduate students). The course seeks to provide students with an opportunity to: reflect on and develop academic research, reading, and writing skills; plan a successful personal program of graduate study, professional placement, and professional advancement; and critically consider multiple aspects and styles of successful teaching. The course will draw on brief contemporary readings, presentations by several philosophy professors, and campus centers and resources for research, teaching, and grants and fellowships. This course will function as a seminar. Most class meetings will include both informal presentations and substantial discussion. Students are expected to participate actively and fully in all class meetings. Requirements include preparation for, attendance at, and participation in all seminar meetings and several brief writing assignments drawn from readings, discussions, and other on-campus events.

Phil 334
John Lachs
19th Century Philosophy -The Will In German Idealism
M: 4:10-6:00

We begin with Kant's 2nd Critique and its identification of will and reason. We proceed to Fichte's notion of positing, which collapses the distinction between will and reason. Next, we look at Hegel's socialization of the will, and end with Schopenhauer's attempt to show that will is altogether irrational. The point of the seminar is to show the complex relations that obtain between reason, will, individuality, and the social whole in some salient German idealists.

Phil 352.01
Dr. Kelly Oliver
Late Twentieth Century French Philosophy
W: 3:10-5:00

This semester we will study selected works by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida on questions of language, subjectivity, and embodiment. More specifically, we will examine texts that address the origins of language, and the relation between language and embodiment. My particular interest is in the relation between animals/animality and humans/humanity as suggested in these texts.

Required Reading:
Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings;

Nature lectures
Levinas:Basic Philosophical Writings; Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being
Derrida, Of Grammatology; "The Animal that therefore I am"; "And say the animal responds?" and Rogues

Method of Evaluation:
All seminar participants are expected to attend class and participate in discussions. Each participant will do an in-class presentation; a written version is due at the time of the presentation. A final paper (15-20 pages) on a topic explicitly related to seminar readings and discussions will be due at the end of the semester.

Phil 352.02
Gregg Horowitz
Topics in Philosophy: Kantian Aesthetics
R: 5:00-7:30

Experience and Concept in Kantian Aesthetics
The labor of the concept for Kant is to give shape and coherence to experience. In the Critique of Judgment, however, Kant proposes that pre- or extra- or proto-conceptual contents of experience also make claims on cognition. Because, therefore, experience cannot be made systematic through the labor of the concept alone, Kant is forced to press the bounds of sense beyond the concepts elaborated in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason. In this seminar, we will examine the concepts or quasi-concepts Kant elaborates in the Critique of Judgment in order specifically to retrieve the aesthetic experience of nature and art for a systematic theory of experience.

In the first half of the course we will read the 'Critique of Aesthetic Judgment,' i.e. the first half of the Critique of Judgment, closely and critically. In the second half of the course we will study influential uses, interpretations and critiques of Kant's aesthetic theory by Gadamer, Arendt, Adorno, Wellmer, Lyotard, and others.

Course Requirements: one twenty-page essay due no later than the penultimate class of the semester and participation in one or more group presentations.

Phil 353.02
David Wood
Heidegger After Being and Time
M: 6:10-8:00

This seminar focuses on a selection of Heidegger's later writings, especially those dealing with art, language and technology. This seminar will engage in a close critical reading, mostly in translation. Reading: Pathmarks (Wegmarken), Off the Beaten Track (Holzwege), The Question Concerning Technology and On the Way to Language.