Spring 2008 Course Descriptions
PHIL 100.02
Introduction to Philosophy
C.J. Sentell
MWF 1:10 - 2:00
Whatever else it is, philosophy is about living thoughtfully; it is, in other words, not just about a set of texts or a set of questions that we ponder under the maple tree, but rather about how ideas become manifest in our actions and relations with others. With this in mind, a central goal of this course will be to cultivate those skills that will enable us to begin and continue to live thoughtful lives. These skills include learning how to read sensitively, express oneself effectively through writing, and, above all, how to engage in respectful yet challenging dialogue with others. Thus, throughout the semester we will examine both traditional and non-traditional texts, as well as films, alternative media, and actual people who are struggling to live philosophically informed lives. A central theme of the course will be the experience of identity in our lived lives, and how those identities affect our personal, social, and political relationships. During this exploration we will venture into areas of race, gender, and class, as well as question the assumptions that underlie everyday practices such as eating, working, loving, and dying.
PHIL 100.03
Introduction to Philosophy: Life, Death, Freedom, and Responsibility
T Boyd
TR 1:10-2:25
In this course we will explore questions concerning the meaning of life. Is life’s value intrinsic, or is it somehow made? Is the meaning socially constructed, or are we endowed with meaning by a creator? If there is no creator, is there any meaning at all? Where would such meaning come from? On the way to following these lines of inquiry, we will explore the work of a variety of thinkers in hopes of resituating common conceptions, if only to generate uncommon perspectives.
PHIL 100W.01
Introduction to the History of Western Philosophy (W)
Helen Koudelková
MWF 9:10-10:00
The great philosophers have posed enduring questions about the nature of human beings and their relation to each other and the world they live in. Who are we? What can we know? How should we live? Such questions have provoked some of the most profound thoughts in history and still demand our consideration today. The goals of this course are twofold: (1) to introduce you to some of the basic texts and central ideas that have informed the Western philosophical tradition, and (2) to equip you to critically evaluate your own ideas as well as those of others. These are not separate ends, of course, for our encounter with the great minds of the past will challenge us to come to a better understanding of exactly what we believe and why. Using the novel Sophie’s World as our “road map,” we will explore a rich philosophical history from the Ancient Greeks to the Existentialists, stopping along the way to investigate in greater depth the work of several influential thinkers such as Socrates/Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, and Marx.
PHIL 100W.04
Introduction to Philosophy (W)
Mark E. Peter
MWF 12:10-1:00
This course introduces common themes developed in western philosophy concerning the fundamental notion of the self: identity, society, knowledge, reality, freedom, and justice. Our reading list consists of figures such as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill, Dewey, as well as many contemporary thinkers. The aim is to make visible how we often use philosophical concepts without realizing it. The hope is to begin to be more aware of them, more aware of ourselves, in thinking through these ideas we live by. The readings will be difficult but rewarding. The writing assignments will be involved and intensive.
PHIL 100W.05
Introduction to Philosophy (W)
Dom Eggert
MWF 1:10-2:00
In a rapidly advancing age in which monkeys can control robotic arms hundreds of miles away with thought alone, scientists have spawned sheep-human chimeras with 15% human DNA, and our fastest computers can outsmart the world's greatest chessmasters, questions of human identity take on a new poignancy. In this atypical introduction to the discipline of philosophy, we will explore the impact of science and technology on ideas of what it means to be human, by discussing an assortment of classical and contemporary readings.
Topics to be covered include: the limits of personhood; the mind-body problem; happiness and the good life; the ethics of human enhancement; the possibility of strong artificial intelligence and machine consciousness; the social and political implications of exponential growth in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics; and the viability of democracy in a high-tech culture.
PHIL 100W.07
Introduction to Philosophy (W)
Joel Beaupre
MWF 3:10-4:00
This course is an introduction to the history of philosophy and the relevance of history to the practice of philosophy. Beginning with Plato’s Symposium, we explore the complicity of desire and truth. We will take note of the differences between our experience of reading Plato and Plato’s so-called doctrines. We will discuss the shadow cast by Platonism that silently informed Descartes’ desire to begin anew from a thoroughly free starting point. We’ll also visit some forgotten portions of Descartes’ Discourse so that, again, our experience of reading philosophers differs from their “doctrines” (for doctrines tend to become substitutes for reading). We’ll see how a Cartesian-inspired set of problems have come to dominate contemporary debates in American philosophy in a way that tends to block reflection upon history rather than open it up (Putnam). We look at models of historical reflection in philosophy with Nietzsche (with a touch of Freud). Nietzsche’s Genealogy offers a memory to counteract the imagined distance between will and values. (For Nietzsche, a theological prejudice alleges that “good” and “evil” originate in a Platonic heaven). At this point, Foucault offers us a contemporary philosopher who (in the spirit of genealogy) critiques gender- and sexual-categories as ways normalization occurs. (We may also have some time to consider some feminist philosophy ala Butler for another critique of gender.) Afterward, Marx helps us look at contemporary capitalist social order so that we can see just how “concrete” (rather than “abstract”) philosophy can be. Finally, we will look at Adorno’s notion of the “culture industry” to update Marx to our era of growing technical sophistication in creating mass-produced identities. Time permitting, we may look at an alternate model of philosophizing and memory provided by a “literary” work by Kafka (“In the Penal Colony”) which goes very nicely with Foucault. We will view at least one movie: Logan’s Run (MGM’s 1976 movie based on the novel by Nolan&Johnson).
PHIL 100W.08
Introduction to Philosophy (W)
Margaret E. Hejtmancik
TR 9:35-10:50
We will read Homer’s Odyssey and Plato’s Republic. The principal guide for class discussion will be the texts themselves. Things discussed might include, but will not be limited to, philosophy, poetry, goddesses, gods, monsters, virtue, justice, war, friendship, nature, stories, geometry, and education. This course offers a somewhat unusual introduction to philosophy, being neither a historical nor a topical survey of philosophical authors or ideas. Rather, through close and careful reading of the two texts, liberal but disciplined discussion of them in a seminar setting, and the cautious crafting of written pieces that adequately present one’s thoughts on the matter, students will begin to formulate for themselves certain questions and themes that have never ceased to be worth examining for those who are lovers of wisdom.
Students will be asked to take responsibility for their own educations by reading the texts with care and coming to class prepared to take an active role in the conversation.
PHIL 100W.09
Introduction to Philosophy (W)
Sarah Tyson
TR 11:00-12:15
This course will be a writing intensive introduction to the history of Western Philosophy. We will study texts from such figures as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Mill, Arendt and others in order to understand some of the major themes and questions in philosophy. Through close reading, discussion, writing, and re-writing we will ask and explore questions like: What is philosophy? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a member of a community? What does it mean to live well? Is there compelling reason to ask such questions?
PHIL 102.05
General Logic
Josh Houston
TR 11:00-12:15
This course is designed to introduce students to the basic concepts of logic, the study of argumentation and valid inferential reasoning. We will cover issues in informal, categorical, and inductive reasoning. Students should leave this course as clearer thinkers with the ability to construct valid arguments and detect fallacious reasoning. The course will lay a firm foundation for students who wish to go on to higher-level logic studies or import logical thinking into their own work in other disciplines.
PHIL 100W.06
Introduction to Philosophy: Selves, Self-Understanding and Societies
Matthew S. Whitt
MWF 2:10-3:00
This course will introduce students to philosophical inquiry through a semester-long exploration of the human self. We will begin with Socrates’s response to the oracular command “know thyself,” and we will see how philosophy is continually reconceived in order to better understand humans as thinking, desiring and vulnerable beings. We will also consider the ways that individual selves shape—and are shaped by—their social contexts. It is in this back-and-forth shaping that philosophy plays its most illuminating, critical, edifying and potentially dangerous roles. The works of Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche, Cesaire, Arendt and others will guide our explorations.
PHIL 211
Comparative Medieval Philosophy
L. E. Goodman
TR: 2:35-3:50
Exploring the work of key figures in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian philosophy, such as Kindi, Razi, Farabi, the Sincere Brethren of Basra, Judah Halevi, Saadiah Gaon, Anselm, Avicenna, Ghazali, Bahya, Maimonides, Ibn ufayl, Averroes, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Ibn Khaldun, as they grapple with core problems in logic, metaphysics, culture, politics, ethics, and cosmology. Topics include creation and emanation, revelation and naturalism, immortality and freedom, animals and the environment, culture and tradition, meanings in history.
The course reflects the symbiosis of Islamic, Jewish and Christian philosophical ideas. Crosspollinations enrich the three traditions, and the interactions hone their critical edge in all three. Watching these philosophers learn from one another and from their shared heritage of Greek philosophy and science and scriptural monotheism and ethics contributes a liberal and humanistic education and to the skills of a sensitive and sophisticated philosopher. Study of these figures reveals the successes and failures of great minds from diverse traditions in addressing the perennial philosophical issues and reveals some of the payoff of a multi-cultural investment in critical thinking.
PHIL 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 several famous positions and arguments of five towering figures in philosophy – Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, 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 mind (and its special features such as consciousness and free will), body, and God, and fill out the story of the period through briefer use of materials from Bacon, Pascal, and Berkeley. We will be using Roger Ariew’s and Eric Watkins’ (eds.) Readings in Modern Philosophy, Volumes I and II (Hackett 2000, and you will be required to write three 5-8 page papers: one on Descartes, one on Spinoza, Locke, or Leibniz, and one on Hume.
PHIL 213:
Contemporary Philosophy
Biopower: Foucault and Agamben
Lisa Guenther
TR 1:10-2:25
What is the nature of power in the contemporary world? French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that models of power based on sovereignty are no longer adequate to explain the dynamic of politics today. Sovereign power is based on the ruling authority’s right to control its subjects from the top down; it reserves for itself the right to restrict, punish, and even put to death disobedient subjects. But contemporary power – what Foucault called biopower – is rooted less in the right to control death than in the capacity to generate, regulate and manage life itself. Biopower is not centered in a single authority like the nation state, but rather dispersed across many sites of biopolitical production: corporations, NGOs, policy think tanks, etc. Examples of biopower include biotechnology, eugenics, national security measures such as biometrics, even foreign aid and the organization of refugee camps. In general, biopower generates patterns of living, consuming and reproducing that are beneficial to the body politic – which is not to say that it is any more just, egalitarian or freedom-enhancing than sovereign power.
In this course, we will study Foucault’s account of biopower alongside the work of one of Foucault’s most creative and challenging readers, the contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. We will begin by distinguishing biopower from other forms of power, including sovereignty and disciplinary power. Then we will study Agamben’s development and modification of Foucault’s terms in Homo Sacer, in which Agamben argues that even sovereignty produces its own form of life called “bare life,” or life which can be killed without moral or political consequences. Agamben traces this concept of “bare life” from ancient times to the Holocaust and beyond. Our task will be to follow his argument and critically assess his departure from Foucault, while evaluating both approaches in relation to contemporary politics.
Required Texts:
Giorgio Agamben. Homo Sacer, Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 0804732183.
Foucault, Michel. “Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976. Trans. David Macey. Picador, 2003.
Recommended Texts:
Sergei Prozorov. Foucault, Freedom and Sovereignty. London: Ashgate, 2007. ISBN: 0754649083.
Andrew Norris. Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. ISBN: 0822335379.
Judith Butler. Precarious Life. New York: Verso, 2006. ISBN: 1844675440
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Empire. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2001. ISBN: 0674006712. Or download the book for free at http://www.infoshop.org/texts/empire.pdf
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. ISBN: 0143035592.
PHIL 245
Humanity, Evolution, and God
L. E. Goodman
TR: 9:35-10:50
How does evolution jibe with ideas about God, freedom and human dignity? Are moral and religious ideas pushed aside by science? Does human evolution allow room for the individual worth? How do we navigate between reductionism and a philosophy of emergence and creativity in understanding the impact of evolution?
Readings include Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Roger Pennock’s anthology Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics, and selections from Professor Goodman’s book in progress, God and Evolution.
PHIL 249
Philosophy of Music
Jonathan Neufeld
MWF 11:10-12:00
This course will confront core topics in the philosophy of music: meaning, form, content, expression, music and language, emotion in music, ontology of musical works, and the nature of musical performance. We will focus primarily on arguments of the 19th and 20th centuries including those of Schopenhauer, Hanslick, Wagner, Nietzsche, Langer, Adorno, Cage, Dahlhaus, Goodman, Kivy, Goehr, and others. You will be required to write three papers for the course.
PHIL 258
Contemporary Political Philosophy
Robert B. Talisse
MWF: 12:10-1:00
This course examines recent debates concerning value pluralism and its supposed implications for politics. Value pluralism is the thesis according to which conflict among objective goods is inevitable and rationally irresolvable. Value pluralists claim that the fact that objective values inevitably conflict entails certain specific political prescriptions. For example, some hold that value pluralism entails a politics based on negative liberty; others hold that value pluralism entails a politics aimed at the cultivation of autonomy; still others hold that value pluralism entails a politics of ongoing and hostile contestation among adversaries. These general political entailments in turn hold distinctive implications for concrete policy questions concerning, for example, freedom of association, religion and politics, public education, distributive justice, and much else. In this course we will try to figure out which (if any) of these entailments holds and what (if anything) can be said in favor of value pluralism as a theory about values.
PHIL 258
Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy
David Wood
TR 1:10-2:25
A central theme in the work of twentieth century continental thinkers is the question of the other. It is at the basis of ethics, politics, sexual difference, our relation to animals, to nature, to the mad, to death, to 'alien' cultures, and to God, not to mention our understanding of language and social existence. And it is a critical theme in what could be called the conscience of the post-modern - that the other not be excluded, but not be too quickly included either. We will attempt to disentangle some of the puzzles in this area by reading selections from the work of such thinkers as Husserl, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Irigaray, Lyotard, Levinas, Ricoeur and Blanchot.
PHIL 294
Special Topic: Practical Reason and Motivation
Gary Jaeger
MWF: 1:10-2:00
What constitutes a reason for action? How does a reason for action differ from a reason for belief? How does reasoning motivate agents? What forms of motivation are rational? This class will explore answers to these questions with an eye towards two separate but intersecting debates. Instrumentalists and rationalists argue over whether agents merely reason about the means to their ends, or whether they are capable of deliberating about their ends. Internalists and externalists argue over what counts as reasons. In order for something to count as a reason, must it be the case that an agent would be motivated by that reason were he to deliberate about it? Internalists argue it is the case because an agent is only motivated to act on a reason when he realizes that it satisfies his own desires. Externalists, however, argue agents can have reasons that are not tied to their desires.
PHIL 352.01
Race and Sexuality
José Medina
M 7:10-9:00
In this seminar we will investigate the intersection between two identity categories: race and sexuality. We will also explore other aspects of the so-called intersectionality of identity, studying the complex relations among identity categories such as class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. The seminar will be divided into three parts that will cover the following central topics: the sexualization of race and the racialization of sexuality; queering the Color Line and the Gender Line; and socio-cultural perspectives on race and sexuality. We will read some of the most influential authors in Gender Theory, Queer Theory, Race Theory, Sexuality Studies, and Cultural Studies: Frantz Fanon, Judith Butler, and Patricia Hill Collins, among others.
PHIL 352.02
Responsibility and Global Justice
Robert Talisse and John Goldberg
Tuesday
3:20-5:20
Who is responsible for global injustice? Are wealthy countries responsible for global poverty? Are wealthy countries collectively responsible for the collective poverty of poor countries, or is each rich country responsible for a poor one? Are multinational firms that profit handsomely from operating in the international economy responsible? Are the citizens of wealthy countries responsible to the citizens of impoverished countries? Can collective entities, such as countries or groups of countries or groups of citizens, be responsible at all? In any event, how can one talk about global responsibilities and global justice given significant cultural and intellectual disagreements over the content and implications of concepts such as responsibility and justice? This seminar will explore such questions. First, we will consider whether or when individuals, firms, organizations, and collectivities such as nations can be deemed responsible to others. Relatedly, we will inquire about different ways in which actors can be held responsible, both in morality or law. From these starting points, we will move to consider questions of global justice and responsibility, addressing issues of economic inequality, immigration, human rights, and democratization.
PHIL 353.01
Figures in Philosophy: Peirce and James
John Stuhr
T: 3:35-5:50
This seminar will examine and compare Charles Peirce’s pragmaticism, phenomenology, and semiotics and William James’s pragmatism, humanism, and psychology as a way to study 1) central issues in epistemology and metaphysics (concerning reality, experiences, language, truth, and justification), and 2) effects of early pragmatism on a wide range of later twentieth century thinkers such as Stein, Stevens, Langer, Lewis, A. Locke, Austin, Quine, Davidson, Rorty, Putnam, Cavell, Harding, Longino Taylor, Alcoff, Habermas, and others. The course will feature visits by several senior scholars at other institutions.
Note that this course does NOT conflict with the special PHIL seminar on Theories of Slavery in Spring, 2008 because class meetings will conclude by the first week of April (with final seminar papers due at the end of the semester, as usual) This course will satisfy the department's 19th century philosophy distribution requirement for Ph.D. students in philosophy.
PHIL 353.02
Figures in Philosophy: Emmanuel Levinas
Lisa Guenther
M 3:10-5:00
The work of Emmanuel Levinas dedicates itself to thinking through the self’s radical responsibility for the Other, above or beyond the dictates of reason. For Levinas, the Other is not a mirror in which the self finds itself reflected, but rather a transcendent Other who puts the ego in question and commands it to responsibility. What can responsibility mean in this context? In what sense does the Other transcend me, without thereby becoming a principle of transcendence like reason? And if ethics goes beyond reason, then what is the place of philosophy – the “science of reason” – in becoming responsible?
This course provides an introduction to the thought of Levinas. We will focus our attention on Totality and Infinity: a book that both emerges from the phenomenological tradition and questions its ethical limitations. By reading Totality and Infinity alongside other, shorter texts by Levinas, we will address the ethical significance of such modes of existence as enjoyment, dwelling, eros, fecundity, and the face-to-face encounter with the Other. We will also explore some of Levinas’ later work on substitution, anarchy and the maternal body.
Required Texts:
Emmanuel Levinas. Time and the Other. Trans. Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1987. ISBN: 0820702331
-----. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969. ISBN: 0820702455
Additional texts will be handed out in class or posted on OAK.
Recommended Texts
Emmanuel Levinas. Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings. Ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. ISBN: 0253210798
Bernasconi, Robert and Simon Critchley (Eds.) Re-Reading Levinas. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991. ISBN: 0253206243
PHIL 353.03
Figures in Philosophy: Plato
Betsky Jelinek
W 3:10-5:00
In this course, we shall investigate Plato's theory of
explanation. We may ask the following questions: How are we to
understand the interaction of the forces Plato calls "necessity", "chance", and "the good" in his cosmological explanation in the
Timaeus? How does Plato's account of "the good" in Plato's Timaeus
square with his account of the Form of the Good in the
Republic? What is the relationship between Plato's conception of
teleology in the Timaeus and his discussion of teleological
explanations in the Phaedo? What role, if any, do the Forms play in
the creation of the cosmos? From this, what conclusions can we make
about Plato's theory of explanation? We will focus on the Phaedo,
the Republic, and the Timaeus. Secondary literature by Annas,
Cornford, Devereux, Ferejohn, Fine, Gill, Irwin, Johansen, Keyt,
Lennox, Nehamas, Santas, Sedley Strange, and Vlastos.
THEORIES OF SLAVERY: PARADOXES OF ABOLITION
Angela Davis
This seminar explores philosophical, cultural, legal, and socio-historical analyses of Atlantic slavery. Beginning with DuBois's inquiry into the failure of abolition, we will examine arguments regarding the abiding institutional legacies of slavery, as well as questions of cultural and political memory. We will be especially concerned with the role of slavery in the production of race and gender formations and more generally with the impact of historical slavery on prevailing discourses and material structures.
