Schedule of Classes and Course Descriptions for Summer 2013
101 Introduction to Philosophy
| 101.001 | Daniel Briggs | MTWRF 11:40-1:40 - June 3-June 29 | DSH-129 |
What does it mean to be? How are we to dwell in time and space? What matters? How is truth revealed? How do artworks work? Is the efficient use of technologies all there is to technology? Are humans essentially different than animals? What does it mean to think scientifically, metaphysically, or poetically? What calls for our thinking and questioning today? What is it to speak a language? What is beginning in these end times? We will address these questions through a study of texts by Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.
There are two required texts: Martin Heidegger’s Basic Writings (ed. David Krell) and Lewis Vaughn’s Writing Philosophy; all other readings will be made available online via UNM Learn.
| 101.002 | Phillip Schoenberg | MTWRF 10:30-12:30 - July 1-July 27 | DSH-227 |
This course will introduce students to Western philosophy through a sampling of some of the great works from the tradition, and end with a consideration of two more recent works by contemporary philosophers. The course is a condensed summer course, not abridged! Students will be expected to accomplish the same amount of writing, and read the same amount of difficult philosophical texts as they would in a full sixteen week term. The course will consider the thought of the following authors: Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche, Emerson, and Heidegger. The contemporary philosophers we will read are Charles Taylor, Hubert Dreyfus, Sean Kelly, and Charles Guignon.
This course will help the student to begin to develop an understanding of the tradition, and 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.
Required Texts: The Republic, by Plato (translated by A. Bloom); Meditations on First Philosohy, by R. Descartes (Hackett edition); On The Genealogy of Morality, by F. Nietzsche (W. Kaufman's translation); Discourse on Thinking, by M. Heidegger; All Things Shining, by H. Dreyfus & S. Kelly; On Being Authentic, by C. Guignon.
| 101.003 | Krupa Patel | Online - July 1-July 27 | Online |
156 Reasoning and Critical Thinking
| 156.003 | Ethan Mills | Online - June 3-June 29 | 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.
202 From Descartes to Kant
| 202.001 | Mary Domski | MTWR 3:00-5:30 - June 3-June 29 | TBA |
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 4-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.
