Spring 2010 Course Descriptions
PHIL 100.01
Instructor: Garrett Z. Bredeson
MWF 12:10-1:00
This course is designed as an introduction to both (1) philosophical reasoning and (2) several of the major philosophical problems of the modern period. To the end of the former, we will explore how to identify, criticize, and defend philosophical arguments. To the end of the latter, we will do our best to thoughtfully interpret historical texts in the history of philosophy. Our guiding threads throughout the course will be provide by core themes of modern philosophy—the existence of God, the nature of reality, and the constitution of the human mind—and as we explore these, we will constantly have an eye towards the questions of what philosophical questioning is, what problems it can address, and what its limits might be. Broadly speaking, the course is structured as four units: First, we’ll examine some of the logic underlying philosophical argumentation, and we’ll do so by considering (and questioning) some of the traditional arguments for and against the existence of God. Second, we’ll look in detail at some of the foundational works of modern rationalism (Descartes) and empiricism (Berkeley). Third, we’ll look at how philosophers in the early part of the twentieth century, especially Bertrand Russell, tried to address the basic questions of philosophy. Finally, we’ll look at the work of contemporary philosophers working in the philosophy of mind in order to see how these traditional concerns are reflected and developed in current thinking on these basic issues.
PHIL 100W.02
Introduction to Philosophy
Instructor: Paul Morrow
MWF 11:10-12
Philosophical investigations of government and political life have traditionally been built upon elaborate theories of human nature. In this course, we will survey major philosophical themes and techniques of argument while exploring this relationship between human and political life. As we look at landmark texts such as Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan and John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, we will pay particular attention to the accounts of perception, communication, and knowledge offered by these thinkers along with their political theories. For some, these powers will figure as capacities to be cultivated; for others, they will appear as threats to be guarded against. Ultimately, large classes of people, such as women, non-landholders, and members of minority races, will be denied meaningful political life in several of these accounts, for reasons that we will work hard to clarify and critique. The writing component of the course will offer students opportunities to reflect on the relationship between our understanding of human natures and our beliefs about how they must be governed-if at all.
PHIL 100W.03
Introduction to Philosophy (W)
Instructor: Mary Butterfield
MWF 12:10-1
The aim of this course is to introduce you to some of the core questions in philosophy with the goal of developing a reflective and critical understanding of the world we live in. With attention to both the history of philosophy and contemporary issues, we will explore questions about what we can know about the world, and how this knowledge is both informed by and constructed through science and politics. Starting with Plato's Meno, we will examine key canonical texts in the history of philosophy, including Descartes' Discourse on Method and Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, before moving onto more contemporary works such as Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. We will close with an in-depth reading of Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which will put the critical abilities we have developed over the semester to use in an analysis of a popular work. While the course is a general introductory course in philosophy, students who have an interest in the philosophical connections between science, knowledge, race, and politics are especially welcome.
PHIL 100W.05
Introduction to Philosophy
Instructor: Rebecca Tuvel
MWF 2:10-3
PHIL 100.02
Introduction to Philosophy
Instructor: Mark Peter
MWF 1:10-2:00
This course is an introduction to common ideas and paradigms of thought that have been deeply influential in western philosophy, such as the concepts of identity, agency, knowledge, freedom, and justice. Our reading list will be broad and varied, consisting of figures like Plato, Hume, Mill as well as many contemporary thinkers. But the readings will also provide an opportunity to practice slow, careful reading and analysis of texts in different philosophical genres. The aim is to make visible how we often use philosophical concepts without realizing it, in order to be more aware of them, more aware of ourselves, in thinking through these ideas we live by.
Philosophy 100W.06
Introduction to Philosophy (W)
Instructor: Melinda Hall
MWF 2:10 - 3 PM
PHIL 102.02 and 102.05
General Logic
Professor Scott Aikin
MWF 10:10-11 and 1:10-2
PHIL 103.01
Introduction to Asian Philosophy
Instructor: Michael Brodrick
TTH 2:35-3:50
Asian philosophies tend to combine conceptual sophistication with imaginative richness and a deep sensitivity to the whole range of human experience. This course is focused on a selection of texts by Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and American authors that present some of the high points of Asian philosophies. One goal of the course is to trace what some may view as the development of Asian thinking from early Indian scriptures that indulge in wild speculation about the nature of reality to the focused discussions of contemplative joy that fill the literature of Zen Buddhism. A second goal is to attempt to discard the framework of concepts and values that normally shapes our experience to see how things look and feel as pure immediacies
PHIL 110.01
Introduction to Business Ethics
Professor Martin Rapisarda
MWF 9:10-10
A study of ethical issues arising from business and professional practice. Topics will include: corporate social responsibility, employee rights, consumer rights, technology and privacy in the workplace, corporate governance, doing business abroad, globalization, and business and the environment. The class will combine readings with the analysis of actual business cases.
Business ethics is the philosophical analysis of the ethical issues challenging professionals in firms and organizations. How to do things right is the question that occupies the accountants, operations managers, strategists, marketers, and human resource managers in the firm. How to do the right things is the question that situates business ethics in the business world. Other questions include: If the role of the firm is to maximize profits, is business ethics an oxymoron or a tautology, or something else? What are the moral rules or principles that inform business decisions? What are the ethical responsibilities of managers and corporations? Is it possible to find analytical answers to ethical questions, or do the answers reflect an individual’s subjective value judgments?
It is important to note that this course is neither a cookbook of ethical recipes, nor an ideological pro- or anti-business sermon. Rather, throughout this course we will explore the manifold and often controversial answers to these questions as they arise in a variety of concrete business cases. The purpose of this course is to develop a philosophically-based framework through which these and many other questions and their concrete examples can be addressed.
Course Objectives: 1. To understand the role of the corporation and its stakeholders in addressing ethical issues. 2. To foster an understanding of the ethical responsibilities of managerial leadership. 3. To develop individual and group decision-making skills in analyzing and anticipating the ethical issues that managers and other professionals face. 4. To encourage the development of rationally defensible arguments in ethical debate.
PHIL 115F.2
Ancient Cosmologies Across Cultures
Professor Betsy Jelinek
TTH 9:35-10:50
PHIL 181 (Honors)
The Morality of War
Professor Larry May
TTH 9:35-10:50
PHIL 182 20 (Honors)
Biopower: Life and Power in Contemporary Politics
Professor Lisa Guenther
MW 1:10-2:25
PHIL 211.01
Medieval Philosophy
Professor Lenn Goodman
TTH 1:10-2:25
Cross-cultural study of works by Jewish, Christian and Muslim philosophers, including al-Kindi, al-Razi, al-Farabi, the Sincere Brethren of Basra, Avicenna, Anselm, al-Ghazali, Ibn Tufayl, Maimonides, Averroes and Aquinas, addressing core questions about humanity and God, ethics, politics. society & culture. In their celebrated philosophical fable The Case of the Animals vs Man, the Sincere Brethren writing in 10th century Basra, call into question human superiority, opening a wide ranging satirical critique. Ibn Tufayl’s philosophical tale Hayy Ibn Yaqzan asks what a perfect man would know and how he would live if never encumbered by language, culture, religious law or tradition. Avicenna, Anselm, and Aquinas seek the foundations of the idea of God. Maimonides explores the aims and means of scripture, its poetic license in speaking of the infinitely transcendent, and the meaning of its insights about nature, the good life, revelation, and the problem of evil.
We begin with the Essay on How to Banish Sorrow by the 9th century physician/ philosopher al-Kindi, who rests his argument on a Platonizing metaphysics and epistemology that will draw in later Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers and generate problems for traditional ideas of creation, divine knowledge, and providence. Avicenna addresses these problems brilliantly, but his synthetic work comes under attack in al-Ghazali's Incoherence of the Philosophers, for privileging naturalism (and eternalism) over creation (and miracles). The issues sharpen in Averroes’ riposte, The Incoherence of the Incoherence. The sophisticated, irenic responses of Ibn Tufayl and Maimonides never fully lay the matter to rest.
The fine textured thought of these philosophers often made allies of thinkers from diverse traditions, committed to (or suspicions of) the intellectualist program the Philosophers. The dialogue among them surmounts time, the barriers of language and boundaries of confessional differences, vividly refuting many a cultural stereotype. The work of these figures remains alive today, and their texts heighten our own philosophical sensitivity, allowing us more effectively to confront the enduring issues about God, freedom, nature and creation, right and revelation, justice, and human character.
The philosophers of all three traditions evince a vibrant humanism centered on the monotheistic scriptures and fostered by the crosspollinations among them. Never simply secular, this kind of humanism remains of vital import in our own world.
Supplementing this course. a reading group will meet on Wednesday nights at Professor Goodman’s home for further exploration and discussion. The group is open to graduate students and qualified undergraduates. Vanderbilt students who are interested in enrolling in the evening sessions for credit should check with Professor Goodman in advance.
PHIL 212.01
Modern Philosophy
Professor Jeffrey Tlumak
MWF 10:10-11:00
PHIL 216.01
Philosophy of Knowledge
Professor Scott Aikin
MWF 11:10-12
This course will be focused on a series of inter-related issues: the analysis of knowledge, the question as to what constitutes a good reason, what the structure of reasoning requisite for knowledge is, and finally, the question as to why we should pursue knowledge. Two short papers, one cumulative final.
Phil 224
Existentialism
Professor Charles Scott
MWF 2:10-3:00
We will read and discuss works by Soren Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Buber, and Simone de Beauvoir.
PHIL 238.01
Contemporary Ethical Theory
Professor Julian Wuerth
MWF 9:10-10
This course traces the origin, development, and current state of the debate between two leading approaches in contemporary ethics: virtue ethics and Kantian ethics. We will also consider writings in metaethics and utilitarianism.
PHIL 244
Philosophy and the Natural Sciences
Professor Betsy Jelinek
TTH 2:35-3:50
PHIL 247
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
Professor Charles Scott
MWF 12:10-1
PHIL 258.01
Contemporary Political Philosophy
Professor Marilyn Friedman
TTH 8:10-9:25
Phil 258, “Contemporary Political Philosophy,” section 1
What are the principles of justice for a liberal democracy? What economic role should a government play in people’s lives? Is there a limit to the legitimate exercise of state power? How can free and equal citizens who disagree over basic religious and moral values nevertheless cooperate in one political system? What do the citizens of an affluent country, such as the US, owe to people elsewhere around the world? We will explore these and other controversies of political philosophy through readings by leading contemporary philosophers.
PHIL 260.01
20th Century Continental Philosophy
Professor David Wood
TH 2:35-3:50
The course of our everyday experience is not infrequently interrupted by a certain reversal, in which our assured position as controlling Subject is challenged. In the reflection that follows, we become aware that what we think of as our autonomy is based on relations of constitutive dependency to 'things' that are decidedly not just part of our world, but in some respects project worlds of their own. The sun, for example, can appear as a large object in the sky, part of the furniture of our world, and yet it does not take much thought to realize that its existence over millennia is a condition for life having evolved and our being here at all. Another person, similarly, can be present unobtrusively in the background of our life until the moment at which they ask for help, obstruct our goals, or rouse our desire. Non-human animals can easily be treated as part of the furniture of our world, even created for us. Everything changes when we realize that we are the product of the same evolutionary stream, and that our continuing existence on the earth depends on their flourishing too.
This course explores a range of 'things' that cannot be treated simply as the furniture of 'our' world, singly or communally, whose existence challenges and deepens our sense of ourselves as autonomous subjects, arguing that it is in and through the practical and reflective tensions generated by our connection with these things that our lives as creative and interdependent subjects are played out. The list of 'things' will include the Sun, the Non-human Animal, the Body, the Tree, the Work of Art, the Erotic Other, God, and the Earth. Starting with Merleau-Ponty's discussion of reversibility, Heidegger's account of Angst, and Levinas's face-to-face relation, we will develop a kind of deconstructive phenomenology, drawing selectively on the work of Sartre, Bachelard, Gadamer, Irigaray, Derrida, Husserl, Deleuze, Kristeva, Lyotard, Nancy and others in the tradition.
WGS 272 (may be taken for PHIL credit with permission)
Feminism and Film
Professor Kelly Oliver
W 3:10-5
From the Nineteenth Century until the late Twentieth Century, pregnancy was considered a medical condition and/or something to hide from public view. Recently, however, pregnant bodies regularly cover the most popular magazines, whose reporters are constantly on the lookout for the telltale “baby bump.” And, a slate of films about pregnant girls and women have come out of Hollywood in the last couple of years (including Children of Men, Knocked-Up, The Waitress, Saved!, Juno, and Baby Mama). In this course, we will examine changing attitudes toward pregnancy and the pregnant body evidenced by these popular images. We will explore how pregnancy has gone from shameful and pathological to romantic and liberating. The focus on women’s bodies in popular culture is nothing new. But, the focus on, even obsession with, pregnant bodies calls for philosophical interpretation. To this end, we will discuss recent films about pregnant girls and women in light of philosophical and sociological analyses of changing attitudes toward pregnant bodies. This course will combine feminist film theory, French feminist philosophy, sociology and feminist historical approaches to the pregnant body. We will begin with a brief overview of the romantic comedy genre because most of the recent films are extension of this Hollywood genre, only now the pregnant body becomes a vehicle for romance and fulfillment.
PHIL 294B
Kantian Value Theory
Professor Julian Wuerth
MWF 1:10-2
This course examines Kant's ethics as presented by Kant across his philosophical corpus, in published and unpublished sources.
PHIL 353.02
Philosophy of International Law
Professor Larry May
T 3-5:30
The course is divided into two parts. In the first half of the course conceptual and normative topics will be considered such as: What is international law and how does it differ from domestic law? What is the best account of State sovereignty and how can it be reconciled with international obligations? What are human rights and how can they be grounded so as to create universal norms and universal jurisdiction? In the second half of the course we will explore specific topics in international criminal law such as: How are we to understand mass atrocity crimes? How can a single individual be held responsible for such crimes? If international crimes are collective crimes, why not consider collective rather than individual responsibility for them? Are crimes against humanity best seen as literally assaults on humanity? Is genocide the worst of these crimes and should punishment be meted out so as to reflect that status? Should aggression be an international crime, and who should be held responsible for it? We'll begin with selections from H.L.A Hart's "The Concept of Law." We'll then spend time with readings from philosophers such as Charles Beitz, Allen Buchanan, Jeff McMahan, David Luban, and Jim Nickel as well as legal theorists such as Antonio Cassese, Theodore Meron, Martti Koskenniemi, and Jeremy Waldron, as well as various recent cases.
PHIL 353.04
Freud
Professor Gregg Horowitz
W 3:10-5:30
Psychoanalytic therapy and modern political life bear a surprising resemblance to one another: in both, people who are not fated to share their lives nonetheless come together to figure out just and desirable ways to live together. In this sense, in both psychoanalysis and the institutions of political life, strangers strive to understand and establish the conditions of their unaccountable being-together. That psychoanalysis and politics are alike in holding out the prospect of mediating the conflict of mutual estrangement and inescapable togetherness (what Kant called our 'unsocial sociability') underscores that both institutions develop in the aftermath of the surmounting of traditional forms of authority. But is this resemblance between psychoanalysis and modern politics any more than an analogy? Can the travails of estrangement and authority as they unfold in psychoanalysis contribute to making political problems intelligible?
We will address this question by assessing the degree to which Freud's account of how authority is created, comprehended, and transformed in the analytic encounter can cast light on processes of political legitimation and delegitimation. More specifically, we will investigate whether understanding 'the transference' - the neurotic mechanism though which the patient repeats her infantile and juvenile relations to authority in the encounter with the analyst, but thereby also 'authorizes' the psychoanalyst to lead her toward improved psychological well-being - can help us to grasp the vicissitudes of political authority. We will set up our problem by reading some philosophical discussions of how individuals are passed from the hands of their families into wider social life already shaped to obey and disobey. We will then read texts by Freud and other analysts about transference and authority, including Freud's so-called 'technical papers' on how to conduct a psychoanalytic therapy. We will conclude by considering psychoanalytic accounts of the legitimation of political authority.
PHIL 353.05
Husserl and his Readers
Professor Lisa Guenther
TH 3-5:30
This course will examine the texts of Edmund Husserl in relation to three of his most important readers: Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Derrida. We will begin with a basic grounding in Husserl’s phenomenology, then focus on three phenomenological topics: embodiment (Ideas II), intersubjectivity (fifth Cartesian Meditation), and language (Logical Investigations and “The Origin of Geometry”). In each case, we will consider the way Derrida, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas read and respond to Husserl’s texts.
PHIL 353.06
Figure: Rawls
Professor Marilyn Friedman
T 11-1
