Spring 2006 Course Descriptions
Philosophy 100.01Chad Lykins
Into to Philosophy
MWF 9:10 10:00
This course is a general introduction to some of the most significant problems in the history of intellectual inquiry, as well as several historical methods for addressing them. We examine controversies concerning the relationship between reality and appearance, belief and knowledge, body and mind, and individual and state. We also think seriously about beauty, morality, duty, and perhaps most importantly, how we are to live. Readings amount to roughly sixty pages per week. Assignments include (but may not be limited to) a weekly written response and four short writing assignments.
PHIL 100.03
Kevin Cutright
Introduction to Philosophy
12:10-1:00 MWF
Philosophy is like an opposable thumb--everyone has at least one and uses it every day. Unlike the thumb, however, one's philosophy largely goes unnoticed and unexamined, lurking behind our thoughts and actions, dreams and regrets. Join me in exploring philosophy, studying some of its history and its enduring issues, its pervasiveness and its relevance. Learn something about yourself along the way.
PHIL 100.04
Josh Houston
Introduction to Philosophy
MWF 1:10-2:00
In this class we will be looking at the history of philosophy as a history of questions, metaphysical, political, social, and existential; from questions of what is good to questions of how to live and how to die. The range of material is broad, both historically and thematically, so that there should be something to interest every student. Students should come to the class with an open mind and a questioning outlook.
Phil 100.05
Matt Whit
Introduction to Philosophy
MWF 2:10 3:00
This course aims to introduce students to philosophical inquiry and the excitement, discomfort and elation that comes from doing and not simply learning about philosophy. We will examine influential works by Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Descartes, Nietzsche, Marx and others in order to enrich our own thinking. Central to our work will be an interrogation of the possibility of self understanding, both in terms of individual self knowledge and philosophy's dynamic conception of its own role. Together we will try to understand the interconnection of these two fertile lines of inquiry: Who am I? and What is thinking?
Phil. 100W, sec. 3 & sec.6
Phil Oliver
Intro to Philosophy/Writing Intensive.
Sec. 03-MWF 12:10-1:00
Sec. 06-TR 11:00-12:15
Our purpose is to introduce some of the leading topics and figures of philosophy, with both thematic and historical approaches. We'll consider the claim that philosophy is usefully "therapeutic," complementing or perhaps rivaling psychology. And we'll take a closer look at American philosophy, with its emphases on individualism and evolution.
PHIL 100W.04W
Norman Whitman
Introduction to Philosophy W: The Question of Truth, Society and Politics.
MWF - 2:10-3:00
The purpose of this course is to examine how the search for meaning and truth has influenced ethical and political philosophy. We will work to understand how a grounding for knowledge or lack thereof has important repercussions for the development of certain ethical and political theories. Towards that end, we will be reading political and ethical works from Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche and Freud. Due to the writing requirement for the course, an emphasis will be placed on style and composition.
PHIL 103.01
Kenneth Faber
Introduction to Asian Philosophy
MWF - 1:10-2:00 pm
A survey of the philosophical thought of Asian origin (especially India and China), from ancient times to the present, including both theoretical and practical concerns [no prerequisites; 3 credit hours; spring semester].
The philosophical thought of Asian origin is justly renowned for its sage advice concerning such practical matters as our ethical conduct, systems of values, and plans of life. Asian philosophy also has a long history of profound inquiry into the nature of reality and our place within it. In this course, we study and discuss these practical and theoretical aspects of Asian philosophical thought, and consider the relation between the theoretical and the practical that properly exists in any philosophy. Our aim is not only to enhance our appreciation of Asian philosophy, but also to deepen our understanding of the nature of the universe and the meaning and purpose of life.
Philosophy 105
Introduction to Ethics
Henry Teloh
MW - 11:10-12:00
Introductory ethics explores how people ought to act with respect to one another. We do this exploration both by a look at literary examples of human action, and by articles about ethical problems. Among the topics we explore are narcissism, control, tradition, parential authority, what children owe their parents, and social justice. There are four four page papers required for the course.
Philosophy 115W
Professor L. E. Goodman
Creation and Evolution Freshman Seminar
TR - 9:35-3:50, FM 106
This course explores some of the meanings of the lively controversy over creationism 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 one of the leaders of the "creation science" movement and an essay on the historic roots and philosophic dimensions of the ongoing controversy, we will study some critiques of creation science by philosophers of science and a religious interpretation of evolution by a paleontologist priest of the last generation, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's classic work, The Phenomenon of Man.
Beyond surveying the controversy and the issues that underlie it, the seminar aims to help students hone their critical and self critical skills in assaying 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. The same concerns come to the fore in developing writing skills - from precis writing and analysis to exegesis of a text and development of a sustained argument.
Phil 115F.10
ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY
David Wood
TR - 1:10-2:25
Man's place in Nature has been discussed since the beginning of human history. We are ourselves natural beings: we eat, drink and breathe to stay alive, and we are also mortal, vulnerable and sexual beings. But as well as our human nature, there is Nature without. Nature sustains (natural resources) and threatens (natural disasters). The explosive growth of technology has lead to a sharpening of these tensions. Pollution, world hunger, global warming, nuclear waste and other hazards threaten to turn the earth from a paradise (?) into a hell - the "late great planet earth". Major ethical and broader philosophical problems are raised by this crisis: animal rights, sustainable development, species preservation, biodiversity and so on. We think of Nature as 'out there', but the shape of this 'out there' is determined by our images and theories of Nature, shaped throughout history by religion, art, myth and philosophical reflection. Contemporary radical movements - including ecofeminism, land ethic, deep ecology have sought to reshape these images. This course will provide a basis for critical reflection on these vital questions. I plan to use art, literature, poetry and film in addition to core philosophical teachings.
Phil 115F.12
BIOETHICS: CONFLICTING ISSUES IN MEDICINE AND THE LIFE SCIENCES
Larry Churchill
TR - 11:00-12:15
This course is designed to introduce and critically examine moral issues in medicine and the life sciences. Emphasis will be placed on discovering the moral habits and traditions that each of us brings to these issues, and on learning new tools for moral reasoning in order to resolve them. The focus will be on those issues and problems most likely to be encountered as personal issues, or as matters of public policy, such as genetic testing and diagnosis, the ethics of managed care, social justice in the distribution of scarce health resources, and care at the end of life.
Medicine and the life sciences affect each of us daily, and sometimes profoundly. One major aim of this seminar is to heighten our awareness of how individual health and health policy choices influence and shape us, and to encourage thoughtful participation in bioethics debates before we face them later in life. A second aim is to make us self-conscience and self-critical of the moral traditions we bring to these debates and to acquaint us with the breadth of tools for moral reasoning in various philosophical, religious and political traditions.
HON 181.34
Democracy, Tyranny, and Anarchy
Robert Talisse
T/R, 9:35-10:50
We now live in an age of democratic triumph the principles, institutions, and language of democracy are to be found across the globe, and serious opposition to the democratic idea is almost extinct. Yet could it be that the age of democratic triumph marks a triumph merely of democratic rhetoric? What do we mean by "democracy" anyway? How does democracy differ from mob rule? Why is democracy better than tyranny? Why not anarchy? Philosophers since Plato have raised serious doubts concerning democracy. In this course, we shall grapple with these doubts as a means to attaining a better understanding of the nature of democracy. Along the way, we might discover that democracy is fundamentally unjust. Readings will be drawn from classical and contemporary sources: Plato, Republic Plato, Five Dialogues John Locke, Second Treatise John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism Cass Sunstein, Republic.com
Philosophy 212
Modern Philosophy
Jeffrey Tlumak
MWF 10:10-11:00
Modern Philosophy is seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Western European philosophy. This spring we will examine the methodological innovations and central positions and arguments of four towering figures in philosophy - Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hume - tracing their interconnections and impact on subsequent thought on issues such as how to do philosophy and how to achieve genuine knowledge of the nature of and relations between what we call "mind" (and its special features such as consciousness and freedom), "body," and "God," and fill out the story of the period through briefer consideration of Bacon, Pascal, Locke, and Berkeley. We'll be using Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins (eds.), Readings in Modern Philosophy, Volumes I and II, (Hackett Publishing), and you'll be required to write three short papers, one on Descartes, one on Spinoza or Leibniz (or with permission, Locke or Berkeley), and one on Hume.
Philosophy 218
Hellenistic and Late Ancient Philosophy
Lenn E. Goodman, Professor
TR - 1:10-2:25
During the Hellenistic period, conventionally described as the years from the death of Alexander to the days of Augustine and the rise of Christianity, a period of remarkable empire building, crosscultural interactions, mercantile activity, individualism, literary ferment, and religious syncretism, philosophers turned increasingly from questions of cosmology and public morality to the more intimate realm of personal moral decisions and individual spiritual quest. The Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics (both Pyrrhonists and Academics), and even the Peripatetics and Platonists sought personal philosophies and couched their philosophical inquiries as a quest for the individual good life. They differed profoundly as to the nature of that goal. The Cynics alienated and non-conforming, took candor and independence as their ideal. The Stoics, imbued with a sense of duty and commitment, equated happiness with virtue and nature with God. The Skeptics sought surcease from the problems of philosophy itself. The Epicureans withdrew into their gardens with a circle of friends, rejecting public engagement and all ideas of providence or any human calling beyond the underlying need for a life of pleasure, which they understood to mean peace of mind. Where the Cynics found peace in a snarling outspokenness, the Stoics found detachment (apatheia) in active and engaged acceptance of one's fate and role. The Epicureans, for their part, sought "undisturbedness" (ataraxia) in a naturalism that promised freedom from the fear of death. As for the Skeptics, the most consistent of them, the Pyrrhonists, viewing philosophy as a bootless and fruitless pursuit of answers to unanswerable questions, diligently collected the arguments of rival schools, only to set those arguments against each other, trusting in their place only uninterpreted appearances and unexamined customs and traditions. In an age of violent upheavals with individuals debarred from the levers of political participation or social control, all of these schools were seeking peace of mind. While each conceived that peace quite differently from the rest, all understood it as a personal undertaking to live in accordance with nature. But nature too and life on its terms, again were understood on strikingly different lines. The earliest Jewish and Christian philosophers, Philo of Alexandria, born not long before the birth of Christ, and Origen, who lived in the second century of the common era, learning from the successes and failures of their predecessors, recaptured some of the spirit of the pre-Hellenistic philosophies and fused their original philosophical ideas with their readings of scripture. Plotinus, in the third century, forging a profound, poetic, and original synthesis of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic ideas, challenged the despondency of the Gnostics of his day. The neoplatonic philosophy for which he argued in his famous Enneads, edited and published by his Syrian student Porphyry, founded a philosophical tradition whose impact is felt all through the middle ages, the renaissance, and beyond.
This course examines the writings of these philosophers with a view to each participant's deciding in each case what is of enduring value in the philosophers'conceptions, imagery, and their arguments. Students of philosophy and religion will find much that prefigures modern notions and anticipates contemporary disputes, whether in ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, political theory, religious philosophy, or hermeneutics. Study of the Hellenistic and late ancient philosophers is critical for an understanding of medieval and modern intellectual history and for any work in original philosophy that does not wish to stumble over the remains of past efforts or fall into the same pitfalls that earlier philosophers have successfully sidestepped or fallen into.
As this is a foundational course there is no prerequisite beyond intellectual curiosity. There will be a midterm, a term paper, and an final exam.
Phil 224.01
Existentialism
Diane Perpich
MWF - 2:10-3:00
This course will consider atheist and religiously inspired forms of existentialism in twentieth century French philosophy. Primary readings will be drawn from Dostoevsky, Sartre, Camus, Beauvoir, Marcel and others.
PHIL 244.01
José Medina
Philosophy and the Natural Sciences
MWF 11:10-12:00 WH 113
This course examines what defines scientific knowledge and scientific methodology from a variety of perspectives. Among the central issues we will study are the following: What is the distinction between science and pseudoscience? What are the proper standards of scientific objectivity? How should we interpret science, as a true picture of reality or as a useful instrument for prediction and control? We will consider how the history and the sociology of science can shed light on these issues.
Philosophy 248
Philosophy and Literature
Henry Teloh
MWF - 1:10-2:00
We investgate philosophical themes in authors as diverse as Fitzgerald, Camus, Peter Taylor, Norman Mclean, and Plato. Among the themes we explore are imagination, control, parenting, narcissism, indifference, and transcendence.
PHIL 256.01
José Medina
Philosophy of Mind
MWF 12:10-1:00 WH 113
This course is a survey of central problems in the philosophy of mind: the relationship between mind and body, the nature of consciousness, the problem of other minds, the status of self-knowledge, and the possibility of artificial intelligence. Especial attention will be given to the complex relationship between personal identity, consciousness, and the unconscious. We will read both historical figures and contemporary authors. We will also consider philosophical assessments of psychological research on mental illness and personality disorders.
Phil 260
Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy: FATAL PROJECTIONS
David Wood
TR- 3:35-3:50
This course takes up the question of the Other in a particular form - the pathological projection of the other (as enemy, as needing to be mastered, as threat etc.). It pursues the linkage between violence and projection of otherness right across the board. It rejects Levinas' quasi-traumatic 'ethical' sense of my being infinitely indebted to the Other and shows that our relations to others need not fall either into paranoia or a hyper-ethical stance. Figures discussed include Hegel and Sartre (the Other understood dialectically, through opposition and negation); Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas (the Other interrupts intentionality); Derrida (difference, alterity, violence, hospitality); Michel Foucault: the Other as the excluded, incarcerated (the mad, sick, deviant, prisoner); Lyotard, Habermas, Nancy (on consensus, community and difference); de Beauvoir and Irigaray (on woman as other and sexual difference); Levinas, Heidegger, Derrida, Llewelyn, and Wood (the animal as Other). Other topics may include violence and civilization, 9/11 and the War on Terror/ friend/enemy and the political/ emergency conditions (Schmitt), transcendence and eros, econstruction and postmodernity, religious belief, projection of future, apocalypse and after.
Philosophy 272
Kevin Davis
Ethics and Law
9:35-10:50 TR
This course will look at moral problems encountered by lawyers in the practice of their profession. We will begin by looking at how philosophers have attempted to apply moral theory to professional roles generally, and then test their conclusions by looking at factual accounts of how lawyers have engaged in moral decision making.
To this end we look at how the lawyer's relationship with a client affects the moral status of the professional legal role and also examine several problems that can arise by virtue of that relationship, including confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and the business terms of a lawyer-client relationship. We will read cases of how attorneys serving as corporate counsel, criminal defense lawyers, and prosecutors have faced moral decisions involving conflicting values and interests. Finally, we will ask what professional practice tells us about the applicability of moral theory and how useful theory can be in evaluating the moral actions of those in professional legal roles.
The class will be primarily a seminar-style discussion course. Students will be asked to write 4 papers (no exams) and to represent, in brief hearings, hypothetical clients who are lawyers accused of morally questionable actions.
Phil 294B.01 - McGill Seminar
The Way of the Artist, the Way of the Warrior: Asian Philosophy in India, China and Japan
Katharine Loevy
T-R, 6:10-7:25
In this course we will survey the philosophical traditions of Asia and their expression in ethico-religious bodily practice. We will begin with the South Asian traditions of the Vedas, yoga and Early Buddhism. We will then consider indigenous Chinese traditions of Confucianism and Taoism, the Japanese tradition of Shinto, and Chinese and Japanese appropriations and transformations of Buddhism. During the last third of the course we will focus upon the practical expressions of East Asian philosophy, thus we will consider Japanese Zen and its impact upon poetry, literature, ceramics, painting, tea, drama and film; Confucianism and its influence upon the Japanese Samurai, and the Asian philosophical foundations for the non-violent resistance of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi. There are no prerequisites for this course, and no previous knowledge of Asian philosophy is necessary. McGill students receive enrollment priority for this course.
Philosophy 330.01
Descartes and His Critics
Jeffrey Tlumak
Mondays 3:10-5:00
Using a close reading of the Meditations as organizational anchor, we will study a rich selection of Descartes' writings in order to lay out and evaluate explicitly, systematically and in some detail the nature and historical role of his goals, his methods, and their most important implementations. To better understand and evaluate his commitments, we will develop Descartes' best responses to his most important critics, from his own contemporaries, such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Gassendi and Arnauld, to later thinkers, from Kant to Peirce, Wittgenstein, and current naturalists. So we will be briefly but fair-mindedly considering landmarks of philosophy after Descartes, and, to understand what he's reacting to and trying to replace or bolster, some crucial prior positions as well. We will read on average fifty pages each week. You will be encouraged to write two medium-length papers on topics of your own choosing (though other formats are negotiable), but I will suggest several unresolved, consequential issues for your consideration. I will also provide a larger list of less challenging questions, an annotated bibliography, and other materials to prepare you to teach Descartes at the introductory and intermediate levels.
WS: 301.01 and PHIL 330.02
Kelly Oliver
Gender and Sexuality
3:10-5:00 (W)
This course is an introduction and survey of two prominent strands in feminist theories of gender and sexuality: psychoanalytic theory and discursive analysis. The convergence of these two approaches to gender, sex and sexuality form the basis of some of the most important and exciting work in contemporary feminist theory and queer theory. With psychoanalytic theory, questions of sexuality and sexual difference are taken seriously by the intellectual establishment. Discourse analysis challenges the psychoanalytic approach and provides a genealogical or archeological approach to sex and sexuality. Both approaches, particularly as they have been employed by feminist theorists such as Judith Butler, Teresa de Lauretis, Elizabeth Grosz, and Eve Sedgewick, examine the construction and disciplining of norms of gender, sex and sexuality.
This semester we engage some of the most significant texts by various psychoanalytic feminist theorists, including Kristeva, Segdewick, Seshdri-Crooks, Butler, de Lauretis, Grosz, and Chow, after a brief introductory discussion of Freud and Lacan on feminine/female sexuality. We will also read Foucault on sexuality in order to appreciate the development of discursive analysis in feminist and queer theory, particularly in the work of Butler, de Lauretis, Sedgewick, Spivak and Stoler. Throughout the semester we will explore the productive ways in which these two theoretical approaches work with and against each other. Our theoretical explorations will be enlivened by illustrations and elaborations through film and essays by feminist film critics, including Bell Metereau, Lieberfeld & Sanders, Chow, de Lauretis, Flitterman-Lewis, and Wallace.
Philosophy 330.03
Deliberative Democracy
Robert Talisse
Thursday, 4:10-6:00
Democratic proceduralists hold that democracy is simply a procedure for producing political decisions on the basis of the aggregation of citizens' inputs; for the proceduralist, the legitimacy of a political decision consists simply in the fact that it was produced by a fair vote. Democratic participationists reject proceduralism; they hold that a fair vote, though necessary, is not sufficient for political legitimacy. According to participatory democrats, a more robust mode of political engagement is required. Participationists differ on the question of what the necessary kind of engagement is. Deliberative democrats are participationists who hold that legitimacy requires that fair voting be supplemented with processes of public deliberation. Since the 1990s, democratic theory has taken a decidedly deliberative turn.
In this graduate seminar we shall survey and critically explore the current philosophical literature on deliberative democracy, including various articulations of the deliberativist ideal and the most pressing challenges to that ideal. We shall begin with some background issues in democratic theory. Then we shall review the founding documents of the deliberative turn (including work by Jurgen Habermas, Bernard Manin, Bruce Ackerman, John Rawls, Joshua Cohen, and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson). We'll next turn to more recent attempts to develop a viable deliberativism by theorists such as Seyla Behanbib, Rainer Forst, James Bohman, John Dryzek, Cass Sunstein, David Estlund, James Fishkin, and Iris Marion Young. Along the way, we'll engage the most trenchant criticisms posed by feminist, radical democratic, postmodernist, conservative, and realist theorists, including Chantal Mouffe, Stanley Fish, Michael Walzer, Lynn Sanders, Robert George, Russell Hardin, and Richard Posner. Our question throughout will be, Is deliberative democracy viable?
Readings will be drawn from multiple sources, including the following books: Bohman and Rehg, eds. Deliberative Democracy (MIT Press, 1997) Benhabib, ed. Democracy and Difference (Princeton UP, 1996) Macedo, ed. Deliberative Politics (Oxford UP, 1999) Fishkin and Laslett, eds. Debating Deliberative Democracy (Blackwell, 2003) Gutmann and Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton UP, 2004)
It bears mention that a large portion of class readings will be drawn from the current journal literature, much of which is available online. Accordingly, students should familiarize themselves with the various online research tools and databases for electronic editions of professional journals, such as J STOR, Ingenta, MUSE, and ProQuest.
Although no prior encounter with contemporary democratic theory will be presumed, students without prior work in recent political philosophy might consider looking at Ian Shapiro's The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton UP, 2003) or Frank Cunningham's Theories of Democracy (Routledge, 2001). Course requirements include a well researched and tightly argued term paper of roughly 5,000 words.
Phil 330.06
Contemporary Ethics
Diane Perpich
M - 7:00-9:00
Taking its point of departure from Chris Korsgaard's defense of Enlightenment morality in The Sources of Normativity, this seminar will look at contemporary non foundationalist ethical theories in both the Anglo American and Continental traditions. Other authors whose works may be considered include Nagel, B. Williams, Nussbaum, Rorty, Heidegger, Foucault, Bourdieu, and others.
PHIL 330.07
Jonathan Neufeld
Art and the Public Sphere
5:30-7:30 (W)
In this course, we will begin by considering Habermas's seminal and problematic account of the entangled development of art, criticism, and public political discourse in the /Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere/ along with certain of his later arguments regarding both public discourse and art. Habermas's broad-brush history of the art public will be supplemented with a bit of art and music history (Thomas Crow, Raymond Leppert, James Johnson, and Carl Dahlhaus). We will then consider the following question: To what extent is it still possible or desirable, if at all, to utilize the concept of public participation when considering contemporary artistic practices? We will address this question from two directions. First, we will consider more general conceptual critiques of the very idea of the public sphere some of which use art and aesthetics as their point of departure (Adorno, Wellmer, Negt and Kluge, Lyotard, Fraser and others). Second, we will consider possible answers to more specific problems raised by the presence of the concept "public" in art practice. For example, who is the public and what is their role in contemporary public performances? What makes public art /public/ art? After the structural transformation (and disintegration) of the public sphere, can mass art be usefully distinguished from other art? Readings these questions will be taken from a wide variety of contemporary sources, musicological, art historical, and philosophical.
