Schedule of Classes and Course Descriptions for Spring 2013

101 Introduction to Philosophy

101.002 Iain Thomson MWF 11:00-11:50 EDUC-104

Introduction to Philosophy: Learning the Art of Close Reading. Professor Iain Thomson. Proceeding historically through a few of the great works of Western philosophy, this course will introduce you to some deep and enduring philosophical questions, including: What are the ultimate foundations of reality? What is being? What is love? What does it mean to be human? How should I live? Can knowledge make me happy? What is the good life? What is the good death? What is the relationship between being and time? What is justice? Which political arrangement is best? What is enlightenment? What effects are science and technology having on our world? What does it mean to think? What is freedom? What are the necessary preconditions and consequences of freedom? What is the meaning of life? How has the answer to this question changed during the course of Western history? What does it mean to read well, and how is that question connected to the good life? The interconnected goals of the course include introducing you to the Western philosophical tradition, initiating you into the art of close philosophical reading, developing your skills in critical writing and argumentation, and, in all these ways, encouraging your thoughtful engagement with the world. Course requirements: This course will require you to read, understand, and come to terms with a variety of challenging philosophical texts and issues. To facilitate your digestion of some difficult material, I shall require course attendance (which will be enforced through a variety of in-class pop quizzes, worth 10% of your grade), two thoughtful, high-quality philosophy papers (worth 50% of your grade), and an open-book (but no other notes), comprehensive final exam (worth 40% of your grade).

Course texts: Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy; Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays; Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life; Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking; Sartre, Essays in Existentialism; and Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education.

101.003 Daniel Briggs MWF 12:00-12:50 MITCH-220

Students will be introduced to the history of metaphysics from the Tao Te Ching to Quine.

Required texts are Philosophy: The Classic Readings (ISBN: 1405145862) and Writing Philosophy (ISBN: 0195179560).

101.004 Elizabeth Van Mil TR 5:30-6:45 DSH-233

In one sense, philosophy is thinking hard about life. In this section of Introduction to Philosophy, you'll learn how and be asked to 'do' philosophy. You'll think hard, question, discuss, read, and write about persistent philosophical questions, including questions about life's meaning, death, the existence of God, science, personhood, emotions, justice, art, terrorism, money, and technology.

Requirements: class attendance, 4-5 hours of reading/writing each week, participation in discussion, brief written in-class reflections, exams (midterm and final), and one or two (3-5) page papers.

Required Text: Twenty Questions: An Introduction, 7th Edition (Bowie, Michaels, Solomon, eds.)

101.005 Phillip Schoenberg TR 9:30-10:45 MITCH-220

This course will sample several of the great works in the western philosophical tradition. We will read selections from Plato, Anselm, Leibniz, Descartes, Kant, Mill, Emerson, Nietzsche, Peirce, and Taylor. We will end the course with All Things Shining, a recent book by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly.

This course will help you to begin to develop an understanding of the tradition, and help you to develop skill at close reading and constructive engagement with challenging texts through critical writing. By encouraging your thoughtful engagement with the world, the course seeks to help you develop a philosophical habit of mind. Assignments include regular short quizzes, two short papers, and a comprehensive final exam.

101.006 William Barnes MWF 10:00-10:50 MITCH-202

Philosophy is often accused of being overly abstract and irrelevant to our everyday lives; this could not be further from the truth, philosophy plays a crucial role in how we see ourselves, each other, and the world we all share. With this understanding of philosophy in mind we will study key thinkers in the philosophical religious and literary traditions of India and Europe from the Ancient Greeks and Buddhist traditions through early modern thinkers to contemporary ‘post modernity’. We will be asking what each of the authors and traditions we look at has to offer in terms of providing warnings inspiration and wisdom for the modern world. The purpose of the course is to suggest answers to a range of fascinating deep and important questions concerning knowledge, reality and the prospect of leading meaningful lives (be warned answers are very hard to come by in the rigorous context of argumentative philosophy). More specifically, the purpose is to encourage thoughtful engagement with philosophical approaches to real life problems. This course will require you to read, understand, and respond argumentatively to a variety of very challenging texts, literary works, movies and documentaries. 3-5 hours of reading a week is required for success on this course. The majority of your grade will come from one short paper, a peer review assignment, and longer final paper; however, there will also be difficult unscheduled in class pop quizzes that will contribute to your final grade, as well as movie and book reviews. Sustained effort, regular attendance, active class participation and appropriate etiquette will be strictly enforced. Authors and schools include, but are not limited to: the pre Socratics, Plato, early Buddhism, Descartes, Vasubandhu, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Madhyamaka Buddhism.

101.007 John Taber TR 8:00-10:30 BANDE-105

FIRST-HALF COURSE
*This is a first-half, 8-week course that will meet from Tuesday 15 January until Thursday 7 March.*

This course introduces students to basic philosophical concepts and problems, such as What is it to be moral?, Where do our notions of morality come from?, Is there life after death?, Is there a self?, What is real?, What is justice?, and What is love?, through classic readings (Plato, Nietzsche, texts from early Buddhism, etc.) and selected films. Course requirements: several short papers on the readings and films, a final exam, and regular class attendance.

101.008 Daniel Briggs MWF 1:00-1:50 DSH-334

Students will be introduced to the history of metaphysics from the Tao Te Ching to Quine.

Required texts are Philosophy: The Classic Readings (ISBN: 1405145862) and Writing Philosophy (ISBN: 0195179560).

101.009 Krupa Patel MWF 12:00-12:50 DSH-333

 

101.010 Krupa Patel MWF 10:00-10:50 DSH-326

 

101.011 Michael Candelaria MWF 10:00-10:50 EDUC-104

In this course, we will survey several problems that continue to motivate philosophical discussion and philosophical worry. Such problems will include: the problem of evil, the nature of the human soul, the existence of God, the extent of moral responsibility, the possibility and extent of human knowledge, and perhaps most importantly, what it means to lead a good life. The goal of this course is to illuminate fruitful ways of engaging with these philosophical problems, which means we'll wrestle with hard questions that rarely offer neat and tidy solutions. Be prepared to READ, REFLECT, and WRITE throughout the semester. On average, you should expect to dedicate roughly 4-5 hours each week to complete the required assignments for this course.

101.012 William Gannon MWF 10:00-10:50 DSH-223

 

101.013 William Barnes MWF 1:00-1:50 DSH-234

Philosophy is often accused of being overly abstract and irrelevant to our everyday lives; this could not be further from the truth, philosophy plays a crucial role in how we see ourselves, each other, and the world we all share. With this understanding of philosophy in mind we will study key thinkers in the philosophical religious and literary traditions of India and Europe from the Ancient Greeks and Buddhist traditions through early modern thinkers to contemporary ‘post modernity’. We will be asking what each of the authors and traditions we look at has to offer in terms of providing warnings inspiration and wisdom for the modern world. The purpose of the course is to suggest answers to a range of fascinating deep and important questions concerning knowledge, reality and the prospect of leading meaningful lives (be warned answers are very hard to come by in the rigorous context of argumentative philosophy). More specifically, the purpose is to encourage thoughtful engagement with philosophical approaches to real life problems. This course will require you to read, understand, and respond argumentatively to a variety of very challenging texts, literary works, movies and documentaries. 3-5 hours of reading a week is required for success on this course. The majority of your grade will come from one short paper, a peer review assignment, and longer final paper; however, there will also be difficult unscheduled in class pop quizzes that will contribute to your final grade, as well as movie and book reviews. Sustained effort, regular attendance, active class participation and appropriate etiquette will be strictly enforced. Authors and schools include, but are not limited to: the pre Socratics, Plato, early Buddhism, Descartes, Vasubandhu, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Madhyamaka Buddhism.

101.015 Laura Guerrero ARR ONLINE

This on-line course is designed to introduce students to some of the major issues of philosophy by examining a variety of readings selected from diverse periods in the history of philosophical thought. Questions concerning the nature of reality, the nature of personal identity, the possibility and nature of human knowledge, and ethics will be included. In addition to providing a basic familiarity with the practice of philosophy, a fundamental aim of the course is to improve each student’s ability to think critically and to make rational judgments. In order to achieve this end, students will critically engage with the philosophical texts assigned, as well as with each other, in weekly on-line discussions. Students will not only be reading philosophy in this course, they will also be doing philosophy!

Engaging in philosophy is a rewarding but challenging enterprise, especially for first time students. Students enrolled in this course should be prepared to spend at least 10 hours a week working on this course, not counting time needed to write term papers. Students who wish to succeed in this course should thus be willing and able to devote the time necessary to keep up with readings and assignments.

156 Reasoning & Critical Thinking

156.001 Dimitry Shevchenko MWF 9:00-9:50 DSH-329

The aim of this course is to familiarize students with the structure of an argument. In the first half of the course, students will learn how to analyze, evaluate and construct arguments. The second half of the course will be dedicated to applying these skills to different issues in philosophy, mainly from applied ethics.

Required texts: 1) William Hughes, Jonathan Lavery & Katheryn Doran, Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills (6th edition) 2) Willam Strunk & E. B White, The Elements of Style (4th edition)

156.002 James Bodington MWF 10:00-10:50 MITCH-120

This course will focus on developing the skills necessary to critically analyze arguments. In the first half of the course, working from Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills, students will be introduced to the logical and linguistic tools and concepts necessary to analyze and construct philosophical arguments. In the second half of the course we will apply these skills to texts in philosophy, both historical and contemporary. We will first spend time on issues in the philosophy of religion, e.g. Can the existence of God be proven? We will look at texts by authors including David Hume, St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Blaise Pascal and Bertrand Russell. We will then move on to the question of “What is the Good Life?”, looking at texts by Plato, Epictetus, Augustine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Alasdair MacIntyre and Robert Nozick.

Required Texts:
1) William Hughes, Jonathan Lavery, & Katheryn Doran, Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills (6th Edition).
2) Charles Guignon, ed. The Good Life.
3) Writing Philosophy: A Student’s Guide to Writing Philosophy Essays, by Lewis Vaughn

156.003 Charles Kalm TR 12:30-1:45 MITCH-120

My Reasoning and Critical Thinking course is based on the components of a theory of argument. Our focus is on the tools for understanding, forming, and analyzing informal arguments; the central aim of which is to provoke introspection and intellectual growth by developing your critical thinking abilities. Basic concepts we cover include: identifying premise and conclusion, forming declarative sentences, deduction, induction, validity, soundness, inductive strength, cogency, basic informal logic, and general rules to ensure good thinking. These topics involve philosophical issues in epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of science. However, the course centrally applies critical thinking skills to controversial issues from your daily life, as well as the human existence and condition in general. This is a core writing class, thus we work to diagnose problems in our own thinking and writing as we explore critical thinking. Developing good prose and solid thinking are paramount goals.

156.004 Joe Spencer MWF 1:00-1:50 DSH-228

As the title suggests, this course will focus on reasoning and critical thinking. In the first half of the semester, students will acquire the grammatical and logical skills necessary for analyzing and constructing philosophical arguments. The second half of the semester will provide an opportunity to put these skills to use in responding to a work of philosophy, Jacques Ranciere's The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Grading will be based on attendance, some shorter assignments, three short papers, and two exams.

Required texts: (1) William Hughes, Jonathan Lavery, & Katheryn Doran, Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills (6th Edition); (2) Jacques Ranciere, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation.

156.006 Kaitlyn Creasy TR 11:00-12:15 MITCH-120

In the first component of this course, students will learn how to recognize, construct, and evaluate arguments. Students will learn how to differentiate between various forms of argumentation and recognize qualities of both strong and weak arguments. In the second component of the course, we will apply the critical reasoning skills learned in the first component to various topics of interest. We will look at Anselm, Aquinas, and Pascal on the existence of God; Kant and Nietzsche on the nature of values; Nagel, Tolstoy, and Heidegger on death; and Sartre and Sider on free will. We will also spend a week talking about the nature of love (as conveyed by poets such as Sappho, the French Provencal Troubadours, Petrarch, Rilke, and Neruda) and what an ideal model of love might look like.

Grading: Response papers, two mid length papers, quizzes, and attendance/participation.

156.008 Justin Messmore MWF 11:00-11:50 DSH-226

 

156.009 James Bodington MWF 12:00-12:50 MITCH-120

This course will focus on developing the skills necessary to critically analyze arguments. In the first half of the course, working from Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills, students will be introduced to the logical and linguistic tools and concepts necessary to analyze and construct philosophical arguments. In the second half of the course we will apply these skills to texts in philosophy, both historical and contemporary. We will first spend time on issues in the philosophy of religion, e.g. Can the existence of God be proven? We will look at texts by authors including David Hume, St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Blaise Pascal and Bertrand Russell. We will then move on to the question of “What is the Good Life?”, looking at texts by Plato, Epictetus, Augustine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Alasdair MacIntyre and Robert Nozick.

Required Texts:
1) William Hughes, Jonathan Lavery, & Katheryn Doran, Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills (6th Edition).
2) Charles Guignon, ed. The Good Life.
3) Writing Philosophy: A Student’s Guide to Writing Philosophy Essays, by Lewis Vaughn

156.010 Lisa Gerber TR 9:30-10:45 MITCH-120

Most intellectual endeavors involve argumentation. From short letters to the editor to complex philosophical essays, from simple everyday discussions to sophisticated legal debates, arguments are constantly invoked to support or criticize points of view. The purpose of this course is to help you learn how to analyze, critique, and construct arguments.

The course material is organized into two main parts. The first part is an introductory survey of important logical concepts and tools that are needed for analyzing arguments. The second part is an in-depth examination of a few philosophical essays focused on a small set of closely related questions on cloning and genetic engineering. Although no background in philosophy or logic is presupposed, this course requires a moderate degree of linguistic sophistication and a strong commitment to rational inquiry.

Required Texts: Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, 4th edition. (ISBN 020530902)
Marrow and Weston, A Workbook for Arguments, (ISBN 1603845496)

Online in WebCT courseroom: 1) Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” 2) George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
3) Handouts 4) Essays on cloning and genetic engineering

Other: Gattaca (1997), film

156.011 Charles Kalm TR 2:00-3:15 MITCH-120

My Reasoning and Critical Thinking course is based on the components of a theory of argument. Our focus is on the tools for understanding, forming, and analyzing informal arguments; the central aim of which is to provoke introspection and intellectual growth by developing your critical thinking abilities. Basic concepts we cover include: identifying premise and conclusion, forming declarative sentences, deduction, induction, validity, soundness, inductive strength, cogency, basic informal logic, and general rules to ensure good thinking. These topics involve philosophical issues in epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of science. However, the course centrally applies critical thinking skills to controversial issues from your daily life, as well as the human existence and condition in general. This is a core writing class, thus we work to diagnose problems in our own thinking and writing as we explore critical thinking. Developing good prose and solid thinking are paramount goals.

156.014 Ethan Mills ARR ONLINE

From letters to the editor to philosophical essays and from everyday discussion to sophisticated legal debates, arguments are constantly invoked to support or criticize points of view. The purpose of this course is to help students learn how to analyze, critique, and construct arguments. (An argument is a piece of reasoning, not a quarrel or a fight.) In addition to a textbook, we will be looking at supplemental readings, websites and films on a variety of issues. Our main purpose in looking at the supplementary material is to practice applying critical thinking skills to a variety of controversial issues. Developing critical thinking skills is an essential part of your overall intellectual health, which is important not just in college, but in life in general. In this course you will develop your abilities to do the following: read carefully, analyze arguments, think critically about difficult ideas in politics, science, ethics, philosophy and other areas, recognize and use deductive and inductive argument forms, recognize and avoid the use of fallacies, compose your own arguments in argumentative essays, and agree or disagree with others in a rational and civil manner.

201 Greek Thought

201.005 Paul Livingston ARR ONLINE

Philosophy begins with the ancient Greeks and there is no better introduction to philosophy than to study their thought and writing. We will consider the Greek development of rational, reflective thought from earlier, mythological and religious origins. We will take up some of the questions that most interested the first philosophers: What is the nature of being and how is it related to change and becoming? How do we know what we know and what are the limits of human knowledge and understanding? What is it to live a good life and how can we be happy? As we pursue these interrelated questions, we will be focusing in particular on the question of what most defines us as human beings: the nature of the human self, soul, or mind. Philosophers that we will discuss include Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus.

202 Descartes to Kant

202.003 Adrian Johnston TR 9:30-10:45 MITCH-211

In the seventeenth century, René Descartes, the founding figure of modern philosophy (a period in the history of philosophy running from the 1600s to the beginning of the twentieth century), initiated a revolutionary reorientation of Western philosophy by centering intellectual attention on the individual human subject as a knowing being. Descartes’ work launched a series of discussions about how we know what we claim to know about the fundamental nature of reality, discussions that continue up through the present. This course will focus on issues pertaining to epistemology (i.e., that part of philosophy concerned with constructing a theory of knowledge) and ontology (i.e., that part of philosophy concerned with constructing a theory of being) in the modern period, starting with Descartes and concluding with Immanuel Kant (late eighteenth century). In particular, we will occupy ourselves with an exploration of, first, the distinction between the two basic epistemological orientations in modern philosophy, namely, rationalism and empiricism (as well as Kant’s attempted resolution of these opposed orientations), and, second, the ontological alternatives between monism and dualism, nominalism and metaphysical realism, and materialism and idealism. Additionally, a series of other related questions and problems will be explored, such as: the relation between mind and body, the essence of personal identity, the role of science as a means of access to reality, and various conceptions of truth. The authors from this period we will read are: Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Arnauld, Pascal, Spinoza, Leibniz, Boyle, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.

202.004 Mary Domski TR 9:30-12:00 SARAR-107

FIRST-HALF COURSE
*This is a first-half, 8-week course that will meet from Tuesday 15 January until Thursday 7 March.*

The philosophies that emerged during the early modern period can be seen as a response to a two-fold challenge: 1) the skeptical challenge to human knowledge and 2) the challenge to find a scientific method appropriate for study of the natural world. We’ll begin the course by considering the growing popularity of skepticism after the Protestant Reformation and the skeptical arguments forwarded in Montaigne’s Apology for Raymond Sebond. Having this background, we’ll examine the arguments against skepticism offered by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. These ‘rationalists’ will occupy us for approximately half of the 8-week session.

The second half of the course will be dedicated to the ‘empiricists’: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Their philosophies will be placed in the scientific context of the seventeenth century. After a look at writings by Bacon and Galileo, we’ll examine how the ‘empiricists’ attempted to integrate the empirical method of science into their respective approaches to knowledge and nature. During the last couple days of the session, we’ll consider Kant’s blending of ‘rationalism’ and ‘empiricism’, or better, what he terms his ‘transcendental’ treatment of the possibility of knowledge.

211 Greek Philosophy

211.001 Barbara Cooke TR 9:30-10:45 SARAR-101

Ancient Greek philosophy laid the groundwork for the Western intellectual tradition. This tradition, broadly speaking, encompasses the attempt to understand the universe rationally or scientifically, as well as the attempt to define what constitutes a good life for the individual, and a just society for the cultural group. Texts from the ancient Greek period discuss metaphysical/scientific, epistemological, and ethical issues that continue to concern all thoughtful persons, and they often present a quality of argument and insight that has never been surpassed. First, we will examine fragments from the works of the Pre-Socratics and the Sophists. Then, we will read all or parts of several Platonic dialogues, featuring Socrates (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Phaedo, Symposium, and Republic). Last, we will take a brief look at the thought of Aristotle, with special emphasis on his Nicomachean Ethics.

Text: Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy from Thales to Aristotle, 4th edition (S. Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd, and C.D.C. Reeve; Hackett.)

211.002 Carolyn Thomas ARR ONLINE

Phil 211, ‘Greek Philosophy,’ is an online course and introduction to great thinkers of Ancient Greece, including the Pre-Socratics (Parmenides and Heraclitus), Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and, briefly, the Stoics. Along the way, we’ll consider fundamental questions, such as: Is anything stable and permanent, or is reality always changing? What are poetry/myth, philosophy, and logos? What is justice? What is virtue, and can it be taught? What are being and non-being? Required work includes substantial readings (approx. 35 pages each week), online lectures, weekly online discussion thread posts, online writings prepared individually (about 12 pages total), midterm exam, and final exam. Online discussions are “asynchronous,” so you can participate and post at your convenience during the week. Required work will be due twice each week, at midnight on Thursday and Sunday nights. Consistent internet access required, but no other special equipment.

Textbook: Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy (4th ed.), Cohen, Curd, and Reeve (Hackett Publishing, 2011)--$48/paperback.

244 Introduction to Existentialism

244.002 Carolyn Thomas ARR Online

An online course, ‘Introduction to Existentialism’ provides an in-depth introduction to existential thinking. Existentialism is sometimes called “life philosophy,” because it is especially concerned with how individuals realize meaning and purpose in their lives. We’ll work together to understand and relate to our own lives a number of existentialism’s recurrent themes, including death, meaningful being, faith, societal alienation, passion, freedom, choice and responsibility, atheism, nothingness, and absurdity.

Required work includes substantial readings by Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, online lectures, weekly online discussion thread posts, online writings prepared individually (about 12 pages total), midterm exam, and final exam. Weekly online discussions are “asynchronous,” so you can participate and post at your convenience during the week. Required work will be due twice each week, at midnight on Thursday and Sunday nights.

Textbooks: 1) Existentialism: Basic Writings (2nd ed), Guignon and Pereboom, eds. (Hackett, 2001)—$25/paperback; 2) Basic Writings of Existentialism, Gordon Marino, ed. (Penguin, 2004)—$18/paperback.

245 Professional Ethics

245.005 Tara Kennedy ARR ONLINE

 

356 Symbolic Logic

356.001 Kelly Becker TR 11:00-12:40 MECH-208

One great thing about the human mind is its ability to draw inferences. Better still is to do this well. In this course, you will learn two new languages developed to clarify the notion of logical entailment, which will help you understand the nature of valid inference. The course is good preparation for further work in logic or mathematics, but you can also take the tools you will acquire into any academic or professional discipline that requires clarity of thought.

Text: Bergmann, Moor, and Nelson, The Logic Book 5/e (McGraw-Hill).

No prerequisites.

358 Ethical Theory

358.001 Anne Baril TR 11:00-12:15 HUM-428

This course introduces the student to a variety of philosophical approaches to living morally, including: the utilitarian’s emphasis on happiness and the importance of attending to the consequences of our actions; Immanuel Kant’s view, according to which the unqualified goodness of a will determined by the moral law is central; and the ancient idea of eudaimonia as the entry point for ethical reflection. We will read philosophical works by Aristotle, Plato, John Stuart Mill, and Immanuel Kant (among others), as well as commentary by contemporary advocates, and critics, of their ideas. These philosophers offer us not only differing answers to moral questions; they offer us different questions, entirely different moral orientations. Though the subject matter of the course is largely historical, the ultimate aim of the course is not to offer a history, but to enable the student to fully occupy and explore these different orientations, so that he or she is in an improved position to answer, for him or herself, the question “how should I live?”

358.002 Brent Kalar MWF 10:00-10:50 DSH-126

We will begin with an examination of the question of moral relativism. Is morality in some sense "relative"? To what? Can ethical judgments be true or false, or are they merely matters of personal opinion and/or private feelings? Next, we will consider the main attempts in the history of philosophy to provide a general theory of ethics and morality. This will include the major modern attempts to define and defend the principle of all ethical judgment, Utilitarianism and Kantianism. Following this, we will consider the two main alternatives to modern moral philosophy: (1) the radical "immoralism" of Friedrich Nietzsche and (2) Aristotelian Virtue Ethics. There will be two short papers, a final exam, and periodic quizzes.

Reading List:
1. Harman, “Moral Relativism Defended” (Krausz)
2. B. Williams, “The Truth in Relativism” (Moral Luck)
3. Nagel, “Value: Realism and Objectivity” (The View from Nowhere, 138-143)
4. Shafer-Landau, “Moral Relativism and Moral Realism” (Krausz)
5. Mill, Utilitarianism
6. B. Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism” (in Cahn ed.)
7. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (plus “Fact of Reason”)
8. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals
9. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy”
10. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (selections)

365 Philosophy of Religion

365.002 Joachim Oberst W 4:00-6:30 DSH-233

In this seminar we will examine conceptions of the divine that have marked the Western tradition. We will use a historical and exegetical approach. Starting with the Greeks we will look at theologians, philosophers, mystics as well as secular free thinkers (among them atheists), who have poured their visions (and rejections) of the divine into religious, philosophical and political proclamations. As will become apparent, an integral part of the varying conceptions of the divine are the corresponding human self-conceptions. Any conception of God(s) is also a reflection of human being. Among the Greeks we shall consult Hesiod, the Presocratics, Plato and Aristotle; among the Judeo-Christians the Prophets, Job, the Apostle Paul, and Augustine; among the atheists and anti-Christians, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Feuerbach, Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. Students are free to include Rationalists like Descartes, Voltaire and Kant as well as religious existentialists such as Søren Kierkegaard and spiritual free thinkers such as Martin Heidegger. That the (anti-)religious conception of God can, does, and perhaps must speak with political force can be seen in the American tradition (Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X) as well as in philosophical atheists like Karl Marx. The purpose of these comparisons is not to befriend one conception over another, but to realize that any confining conception of the divine may end up in (religious) idolatry or (philosophical and political) ideology. The goal then of this seminar is to discover and develop the intellectual freedom necessary to confront any conception of the divine with honesty and integrity, which, as we will see, can then be coupled with the courage for critical self-examination.

372 Modern Social & Political Philosophy

372.001 Ann Murphy MWF 8:00-8:50 MITCH-221

 

381 Philosophy of Law

381.001 Barbara Cooke TR 12:30-1:45 MITCH-211

Philosophical questions about law include the following: what is law, and what is its relationship to (critical/rational) morality? What should we do when there seems to be a conflict between law and (critical/rational) morality? Under what conditions might civil disobedience be justified? Are judges bound by precedent and established rules of law, or is the courtroom really an arena for the exercise of unbridled judicial power, and the playing out of various moral/social agendas? What do we mean when we talk about rights and obligations, both in moral contexts and legal contexts? What is the philosophical basis behind the liberty-rights protected by the United States Constitution (freedom of speech, religious freedom, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, freedom from undue interference with sexual and reproductive choices, etc.)? What is justice? What (if anything) is the justification for our practices of criminal punishment? What does it mean to be responsible for one's actions, legally and morally?

Suggested prerequisite: a course in moral theory.

Text: Philosophical Problems in the Law, 5th edition (David M. Adams; Wadsworth.)

*414 Nietzsche

*414.001 Brent Kalar MWF 12:00-12:50 DSH-128

This course will examine Friedrich Nietzsche's "Romanticism." Romanticism was a major philosophical, literary, and cultural movement that transformed modern European society, but there is much disagreement over what its essence was. One way to describe Romanticism is as the attempt to create a "new mythology" centered around a "religion of art." In what sense was Nietzsche a "Romantic" philosopher? What significance did his Romanticism have in shaping his most famous philosophical and cultural views (the aesthetic justification of existence, will to power, eternal recurrence, the superman, the rejection of Christianity, etc.)? Did Nietzsche really abandon Romanticism after The Birth of Tragedy, as he later tried to claim? We will attempt to test the hypothesis that the key to understanding Nietzsche's relation to Romanticism is to examine his shifting relation to, and understanding of, the cultural legacy of Richard Wagner. There will be two short papers and a longer term paper.

Reading List:
The Birth of Tragedy
On the Future of Our Educational Institutions
Untimely Meditations
Selected Early Notebooks, Human All-Too Human, and Daybreak Writings
from the Period of 1876-1883 Pertaining to (1) Wagner (2)
Skepticism
The Case of Wagner
Nietzsche Contra Wagner
Selected Writings from Early Notebooks, Human All-Too Human, and
Daybreak on Will to Power
The Gay Science (selections)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Selected Writings on the Place of Zarathustra in Nietzsche’s oeuvre
Selected Late Notebooks Writings Pertaining to Will to Power and Eternal
Recurrence
Beyond Good and Evil (selections)

*415 History & Philosophy of Mathematics

*415.001 Paul Livingston R 12:30-3:00 DSH-132

Introduction to formal structures, mathematical logic and philosophical meta-logic in a philosophical and historical context. We will pursue the implications of twentieth-century formal thought for longstanding questions of philosophy by means of an interplay of formal proof, informal argument, and digressive elucidation. After an introduction to elementary set theory, we will discuss transfinite sets and the nature of infinity, formal paradoxes, model theory, computability theory and Turing machines, and conclude with a proof sketch of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Time and interest permitting, we shall also explore some recent provocative applications of formal structures and results to problems in the history of philosophy, philosophy of mind, and political philosophy in texts by authors such as Wittgenstein, Putnam, Priest, and Badiou. Prerequisite: a first course in symbolic logic or the equivalent.

*421 Early Heidegger

*421.001 Iain Thomson M 4:00-6:30 DSH-129

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is widely considered one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century. This seminar will focus primarily on his most famous and influential work, Being and Time (1927). Here in his early magnum opus, Heidegger develops and deploys a phenomenological method in order to help us understand the ontological structure underlying intelligibility. The result is a revolutionary reconceptualization of existence, selfhood, and being, one which challenges — and seeks to replace — central presuppositions philosophers have inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics. In order to understand how and why Heidegger’s philosophical views shift after Being and Time, we will conclude the course by reading some of Heidegger’s later work, including the minor masterpiece “The Origin of the Work of Art.” This course is good — indeed, indispensable — preparation for understanding much subsequent work in continental philosophy (and other theoretical work in the humanities), because that work takes off from insights in Heidegger’s work.

Prerequisites: Graduate standing, background in continental philosophy/existentialism, or consent of professor.

Course Requirements: Grades will be based on two take home essay assignments (for undergraduates) or a single research paper (for graduate students).

Required texts: 1. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1962); 2. Thomson, Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); 3. Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of the University (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and 4. Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Recommended Texts: 1. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993 [1927]); and 2. Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, J. Stambaugh, trans. (Albany: SUNY, 1996).

*431 Ch'an and Zen

*431.001 Richard Hayes TR 11:00-12:15 DSH-126

East Asian Buddhist thinkers concerned themselves with such issues as whether virtue is innate or acquired, how wisdom manifests itself in one's social relations, and whether various kinds of knowledge are conducive to the acquisition of wisdom. Some wrote systematic essays, but many presented their insights through anecdotes, which it is left to the reader to interpret. Because Chan is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that has its roots in India, the first part of the course will be devoted to reviewing issues in early Mahayana literature that became important issues in Chan and Zen. After a survey of relevant themes in Indian Mahayana Buddhism, we shall read key texts by the Chinese Chan master Huineng, the medieval Korean Son teacher Chinul, the medieval Japanese Zen master Dogen, and the modern American Zen master Robert Aitken.

Texts: Lankavatara Sutra by Red Pine, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch by Yampolsky, Morten Schlütter, The Heart of Dogen's Shobogenzo by Norman Waddell and Masao Abe and Tracing back the radiance : Chinul’s Korean way of Zen by Robert Buswell, Jr.

*441.001 T: Philosophy & Liberation

*441.001 Michael Candelaria MWF 1:00-1:50 DSH-229

In this course we will examine Marxism, Critical Theory, and Latin American Liberation Philosophy. We will begin with the Hegelian influence on the early Marx and move on to see how the Hegelian Marx informs the Hungarian Marxist Georgi Luckas. Our examination of Critical Theory begins with the Frankfurt theorists—Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas. Here our attention turns to the theory/practice problem, the dialectic of the Enlightenment, the relation between philosophy and practice, reason as domination, and culture and technology as ideology. Then we will consider critics of Habermas—Lyotard, Foucault, Nancy Fraser, and Seyla Benhabib. The last part of the semester will be devoted to a study of Latin American liberation philosophy with an emphasis on the Latin American critique of European and North American Philosophy as ideology.

442.001 Individual Philosophers

442.001 Phillip Schoenberg TR 2:00-3:15 EDUC-101A

This course is a survey of the thought and writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882). The course will take Emerson seriously as a philosopher, and focus on a close reading of his major published works. In order to situate Emerson within the ongoing conversation of philosophy, we will read brief selections from other philosophers he influenced, or who otherwise bear comparison and/or contrast with him, (e.g. Nietzsche) as well as a few select essays by contemporary interpreters who engage with Emerson as a philosopher. This course will require a substantial amount of reading each week (20—40 pages). Although I will lecture regularly as necessary, students are expected to participate in, and occasionally lead, class discussion. The course grade will be based on regular, brief, written responses to the assigned reading (30%); class participation, including a presentation (30%); and a formal, college level research paper (40%).

Required Texts: Emerson: Essays and Lectures (Library of America), and a “Course Reader,” (Available at the UNM Copy Center).

Recommended Text: The Transcendentalists, by Barbara Packer.

Prerequisites: one course in philosophy. (Those interested in the course but who may not feel adequately prepared for a senior level course, are encouraged contact me at pdw01@unm.edu, or visit during my office hours this fall.)

454/554 Sem: Metaphysics & Epistemology

454/554.001 Kelly Becker T 2:30-5:00 JOHNS-B102

Robert Nozick proposed the following condition on knowledge: S knows that p only if, were p false, S would not believe that p. Simple and straight forward. How in the world could that stir controversy? Come find out.

Texts: Excerpts from Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations (Harvard, 1981); Becker and Black, eds., The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology (Cambridge, 2012); supplements TBA.

Requirements: Mid-term and Final papers.

457/557 Sem: History of Virtue Ethics

457/557.001 Anne Baril

TR 12:30-1:45

EDUC-101

A study of ethical positions that emphasize the virtues, including the Aristotelian, Thomistic, and British Moralist traditions.

462/562 Sem: William James

462/562.001 Russell Goodman

W 2:00-4:30

SARAR-107

In this seminar we will trace the evolution of the thought of the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910). James was a fascinating person, and anyone taking the course would do well to read one of the many biographies of James before the course begins. An excellent recent biography is Robert Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. There are other fine biographical works by Gerald Myers, Gay Wilson Allen, Ralph Barton Perry, among others.

The course will begin with James’s earliest publications, including “Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondence” (1878), “Brute and Human Intellect” (1878), and “The Sentiment of Rationality” (1879). We shall then read James’s Psychology: Briefer Course (1892), a shortened version (only 400 pages!) of his monumental The Principles of Psychology (1890). We then pass to essays from The Will to Believe (1897), including the title essay, “Is Life Worth Living?” and “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” After spring break we will read some of James’s Talks to Teachers, including “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,” and we conclude the course with three weeks devoted to James’s most famous work, Pragmatism (1907).

Students will be expected to keep up with the readings, participate in class discussions, and to submit a midterm paper on March 13th and a final paper on May 1st.

Our main text for the course is William James: Writings 1878-1899, Library of America, ed. Gerald E. Myers.
We will also use William James, Pragmatism, ed. Bruce Kuklick, Hackett Publishing

*480 Philosophy and Literature

*480.001 John Bussanich

R 2:00-4:30

MITCH 219

In this seminar we will explore novels, stories, poetry, essays and philosophical writings that contribute to the search for meaning and authenticity in a ‘disenchanted world’. Can literature lead to self-knowledge and overcome self-deception, alienation, and the fragmentation of desire? What sort of journeys within and to the self are possible? A major theme will be how (especially) modernist writers conceive novel ways of construing the relationship between words/language and reality amidst the fragmentation of modern life. Some modernists have argued that literary language is no longer a form of mediation but a reality to be explored and experienced in its own right. But what sort of experience, philosophically, might this be? Others confront fragmentation by embracing the mythic unity of word and being. Readings: Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, Rilke, Hoffsmanthal, Trakl, Robert Musil, Benjamin, Blanchot, Camus, Kafka, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, Hamsun, Sebald, Rebecca Solnit, David Foster Wallace. Among critics we will read selections from Stanley Cavell, Gerald Bruns, Simon Critchley, and others.

486/586 Sem: Zizek

486/586.001 Adrian Johnston

T 2:00-4:30

EDUC-101

Slavoj Žižek is perhaps the most famous philosopher alive today as well as an internationally renowned public intellectual. Žižek’s work is centered on a unique combination of philosophy (especially the ideas of Descartes, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Marx) and psychoanalysis (in particular, the theories of Freud and Lacan), with this combination deftly deployed so as to analyze a diverse array of contemporary social, cultural, and political phenomena. His philosophical version of psychoanalysis enables him to reveal and track unconscious processes structuring subjects and societies in various subtle but significant ways. Furthermore, Žižek has succeeded at formulating one of the most compelling visions in the history of philosophy of a materialist ontology interfaced with a corresponding theory of subjectivity, accomplishing this through a startlingly original retrieval of the intellectual legacy of modernity beginning with the discovery of the Cartesian Cogito. In May 2012, he published a monumental, one-thousand-page book entitled Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. This work, arguably Žižek’s magnum opus, elaborates in detail the multiple facets of the synthesis of German idealism and Lacanian analysis forming the core of his theoretical position. This seminar will be organized around a close reading of the entirety of Less Than Nothing.

670 Sem: Sanskrit Philosophical Texts

670.001 John Taber

ARR

ARR

A survey of the main concepts and theories of Indian logic and epistemology. Indian logic is really the same as Western logic (logic is logic!), despite some rumors you may have heard (e.g., Graham Priest’s claim that it allows for certain kinds of contradictions), but, mainly, it has a different way of formulating the relationships between the terms of a deductive syllogism. We will cover: ancient dialectic, i.e., the science of debate, out of which the theory of different “means of knowledge” (pramanas) arose; the various definitions of individual means of knowledge, with special attention given to perception (pratyaksa); the earliest (Nyaya and Samkhya) theory of the threefold syllogism; the new theory of the syllogism based on the “three marks” of a valid reason; Dignaga’s “wheel of reasons”; and Dharmakirti’s reformulation of the “pervasion” (vyapti) relation between the reason and the property-to-be-proved (aka major term). This sounds technical (and it is; you can’t really understand the differences of the Indian system unless you get into some details), but I will try to make it accessible as possible. Lectures and discussions will be accompanied by the reading of key texts in translation. The seminar is suitable for all philosophy graduate students. A separate tutorial, in which we will read the texts in Sanskrit, will be scheduled for the Sanskrit students. I will be contacting everyone who enrolls by mid-January to arrange a meeting time for the seminar that is as convenient as possible.

 

* - Indicates courses that can be taken for undergraduate or graduate credit. However, graduate students may wish to consult their graduate advisors as these courses will not count toward the 500 level graduation requirements.