Section: 001 / CRN: 51262

MWF 1300-1350 / Full-Term

Instructor: Candelaria

This course is an introduction to philosophy.  We will survey the fundamental areas of philosophy including the following: philosophy of religion, ethics, freedom of the will, personal identity, and philosophy of mind.  Our focus will be on arguments, their analysis and evaluation. Our approach will also be a historical one. We will begin with Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, then we will consider medieval philosophy, Anselm. Turning out attention to modern philosophy we will examine Descartes and Kant. We will discuss nineteenth century philosophy in Marx and Nietzsche. An examination of twentieth and twenty first century philosophy will round out the course—Heidegger, Foucault, Quine, Nelson Goodman, and others. 

Section: 002 / CRN: 51263

MWF 1100-1150 / Full-Term

Instructor: Kim

Despite various understandings and controversies regarding the nature and scope of philosophy, it may be relatively safer to say philosophy is a reflective activity that pursues answers to some questions regarding a good life. In this regard, we may ask the following questions that may be crucial to this activity: what a good life is, how we can know and justify it, and what the ways are for living a good life. In this class, we will review various understandings of a good life through some major philosophical works around the world and share our thoughts together. 

For this, we will primarily focus on a subfield of philosophy called “ethics” or “moral philosophy.” Our main task is to read some classical texts dealing with moral issues in human history by focusing on - but not confining ourselves to - the Western tradition. Furthermore, we will also additionally read some texts with other issues that may be relevant to our pursuit of the concept of a good life from time to time, which may strengthen and deepen our understanding of moral issues: personal identity, self, and human nature. 

Section: 003 / CRN: 51264

ONLINE / Full-Term

Instructor: Mercier

In this online, asynchronous course, students will be initiated to philosophy as a practice of rational and critical enquiry. Through our reading of philosophical texts, we will raise and address such fundamental questions as: What is the good life? What is the ultimate nature of reality? What defines human beings? What is the meaning of human life? What makes something right or wrong? What is our place in the world and our relationship to other beings?

We will read major authors from the Western traditions, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Sartre and Beauvoir. We will also contrast their thinking with philosophy from the Buddhist and Native American tradition.

Weekly reading, reading quizzes and discussion posts will constitute the core of the class. In addition, students will also be required to write a mid-term and a final paper where they will personally engage the thoughts of the authors.

Section: 004 / CRN: 55697

ONLINE / Second-Half

Instructor: Candelaria

This course is an introduction to philosophy.  We will survey the fundamental areas of philosophy including the following: philosophy of religion, ethics, freedom of the will, personal identity, and philosophy of mind.  Our focus will be on arguments, their analysis and evaluation. Our approach will also be a historical one. We will begin with Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, then we will consider medieval philosophy, Anselm. Turning out attention to modern philosophy we will examine Descartes and Kant. We will discuss nineteenth century philosophy in Marx and Nietzsche. An examination of twentieth and twenty first century philosophy will round out the course—Heidegger, Foucault, Quine, Nelson Goodman, and others. 

Section: 005 / CRN: 51266

TR 0930-1045 / Full-Term

Instructor: Seiler

In this course, we will survey the history of philosophy and engage in some comparative work between South Asian and Western philosophical traditions. Topics may include epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics, Buddhism, logic, soteriology, etc. Through an examination of both South Asian and Western thought, this course will provide you with an introduction to philosophical thought and some of the problems to which it is applied.

Section: 006 / CRN: 51267

TR 1100-1215 / Full-Term

Instructor: Barton

In this course, students will be introduced to philosophy (“love of wisdom”) through the medium of the philosophy of religion. No prior familiarity with philosophy, religion, or the philosophy of religion will be assumed. Such a staging ground offers multiple angles of philosophical analysis: epistemology (the study of knowledge), ontology/metaphysics (the study of existence), ethics (the study of right/wrong), logic (the study of thinking), and so on. Students will encounter the following questions (and many more): Does God/do gods exist? How do we explain the existence of God/gods in light of an imperfect world? Is it even possible to comprehend divine entities with our all-too-human concepts? How does God/do gods engage in revelation (if at all)? What does it mean to believe in God/gods? Drawing from different religious traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Judaism, will enable students to investigate and interrogate the aforementioned questions from a variety of standpoints. Students should expect to purchase a textbook containing key readings (“Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: 3^rd edition” edited by Kelly James Clark); however, all other texts will be made available to students at no cost. 

Section: 007 / CRN: 60452

MWF 0900-0950 / Full-Term

Instructor: Patwary

In this course, we will traverse through the history of philosophy by reading short representative works from several different philosophical traditions. As we progress, we will examine the major branches of philosophy, including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics, and investigate the complex relationships between them. While our survey of the history will by no means be exhaustive, our brief encounter with the thought of different philosophers through history will enable us to see the paradigms in which human beings have thought about themselves and the world and how their practice of philosophy led them to such conceptions. Ultimately, we will aim to see how philosophy can inform our lives. The readings in this course will be based not only on what is considered the traditional canon but also on some of the voices that have not been heard as intently but to whom contemporary times have started to pay attention.

All readings will be made available on Canvas. Grades will be based on participation, weekly response papers, and a final paper.

Section: 001 / CRN: 51304

MWF 0900-0950 / Full-Term

Instructor: Smith

This course will provide students with an understanding of the basic structures of argumentation. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify various components and kinds of argumentation, explicate others’ arguments, and come up with arguments of their own. Adeptness in argumentation entails reading, writing, and discussing ideas with attention, charitability, and concision. Consequently, this course will be reading, writing, and discussion intensive.

The course material is organized into two sections. The first section is an introductory survey of important logical concepts and skills needed for analyzing arguments. The second section applies these concepts and skills to two related questions: what is education, and what is the purpose of receiving an education?

Section: 002 / CRN: 51306

MWF 1000-1050 / Full-Term

Instructor: Harrison

Section: 004 / CRN: 52659

MWF 1100-1150 / Full-Term

Instructor: Hinton

Critical thinking informs arguably every aspect of our lives. As we move through our day, we receive information, make decisions, and cast judgements. From constructing scientific hypotheses and addressing ethical dilemmas, to writing academic essays and engaging in debates, critical thinking is always at work. This course provides students with the tools necessary to critically engage the practices that inform our everyday experiences.

The course is divided into two sections. In the first section, students will learn how to identify, assess, and construct arguments. Logical concepts will be introduced alongside how to evaluate them for effectiveness, validity, and persuasion. In the second section, students will examine philosophical issues in the philosophy of art. We will address art and community, art in public spaces, and art as political.   

Section: 005 / CRN: 52660

TR 1230-1345 / Full-Term

Instructor: Swick

In this course we will develop skills in argumentation, critical thinking, and reasoning. The first part of the course will cover how to analyze and assess arguments by studying the elements of argumentation: deduction, induction, validity, soundness, scientific reasoning, moral reasoning, and more. The second part of the course will focus on applying what we learned in the first part to an assortment of texts. We will critically engage with materials from a variety of sources, including the South Asian Buddhist tradition. 

Section: 006 / CRN: 51310

TR 1100-1215 / Full-Term

Instructor: Garrido Sierralta

This course will introduce students to logical reasoning and critical thinking. The aim of this course is to help students recognize, assess, and construct arguments. The course structure will be divided into two parts. In part one, the course will survey important concepts and tools necessary in the recognition, assessment, and construction of arguments. For instance, we will discern the differences between deductive and inductive reasoning, the temptations of argumentative fallacies, and the clear and unclear uses of language. In part two, we will take an in-depth examination of a current topic by looking at philosophical works, short articles, and videos. Here, the student will be able to practice their argumentative skills. Students will be evaluated on their participation in class and group discussions, quizzes, responses, one mid-term exam, two papers, as well as a final paper presentation.

Section: 007 / CRN: 52661

TR 0930-1045 / Full-Term

Instructor: Hedling

Section: 009 / CRN: 51309

ONLINE / Full-Term

Instructor: Ben Itzhak

This class aims at developing your skills in writing, argumentation, argument analysis, reasoning, and critical thinking. We will study the structures of argumentative texts and of different types of arguments (deduction and induction, descriptive vs normative arguments, etc.) as well as the elements of meaning and language that convey those arguments. We will also consider what constitutes a flawed argument, or logical fallacy. Throughout the class, we will practice our skills at spotting and analyzing arguments by reading texts on philosophical and ethical themes. Students will also practice their own argumentative skills by writing short essays in response to some of these texts. The logical and analytical tools acquired in this class will be highly useful to students in their future coursework by enabling them to read and analyze material efficiently and to write strong and well-structured papers. 

Section: 010 / CRN: 55696

ONLINE / Second-Half

Instructor: Gerber

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

There are two sections in this course. First, we have an introductory survey of important logical concepts and tools needed for analyzing arguments. The second section is an in-depth examination of philosophical essays on the philosophy of food.  

Course Material:  

• Anthony Weston, A Rulebook for Arguments 
• Collection of handouts and essays posted on Canvas 

Section: 001 / CRN: 61925

ONLINE / First-Half

Instructor: Gatsch

This online course focuses on some of the ethical issues that arise in the context of professional life.  Beginning with an overview of three major ethical theories, we will consider how these theories, which traditionally concern personal morality, apply to life in a professional setting.  We will also examine the roles and obligations associated with professional life. What is the relationship between personal and professional codes of conduct? What distinguishes professions from other occupations?  Through the lens of various professions, we will look at issues such as lying and truth-telling, whistleblowing, confidentiality, and the obligations of professionals toward the public.  Using a combination of readings, case studies, and online discussion groups, we will explore these ideas in a philosophical manner, looking to understand the ethical principles at work.  This course will give students a solid introduction to ethical reasoning and will help to develop the tools necessary to apply ethical principles to real-world settings. 

Required text: 

Ethics Across the Professions: A Reader for Professional Ethics, 2^nd ed, Clancy Martin, Wayne Vaught, and Robert C. Solomon, editors. OUP. (ISBN-13: 978-0190298708/ISBN-10: 0190298707)

Section: 002 / CRN: 51318

TR 1100-1215 / Full-Term

Instructor: Johnston

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’s 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 overcoming 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 existence of human freedom, 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, Pascal, Spinoza, Leibniz, Boyle, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.

Section: 003 / CRN: 62005

ONLINE / First-Half

Instructor: Domski

Section: 002 / CRN: 51321

ONLINE / Full-Term

Instructor: Haulotte

Philosophy in the West conceives its origins in the ancient Greek tradition. This class introduces philosophy through a survey of the extant material from these thinkers. In particular, this class will travel from Thales and the pre-Socratics through Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and finally providing a brief engagement with the Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans of the Hellenistic period. These investigations will primarily discuss metaphysics (the nature of ultimate reality), epistemology (the study of knowledge), and ethics (the study of the good life) through critical engagement with these thinkers. What is a life worth living? How does such a life stand in relation to political authority? Should we fear death—and if so, why? Who can claim genuine knowledge of things? What is the power of philosophy? Can philosophy grasp the truths of ultimate reality, and if so, how? The aim is to see how these different topics come together for the ancient Greeks, and, possibly for us as their contemporary readers as well. This course will be fully online and consists of weekly reading responses, short papers, and a final.

Section: 001 CRN: 60456

TR 0930-1045 / Full-Term

Instructor: Harter

Section: 001 / CRN: 56968

W 1300-1530 / Full-Term

Instructor: Oberst

In this course students will encounter the principles of existentialism. The (existential) encounter will bring us to question ourselves: our own conception of reality (what we deem real), the world (we live in) and life (we live). An examination of some of the seminal texts and their authors (including key aspects of their personal and political history) will introduce us to the main themes of this movement. A thorough reading of their work (exegesis), scrupulous discussion (interpretation) of those texts and unreserved participation in these discussions (authenticity) will confront us with ourselves and each other — through both the experience of existentialist thought and the thinking of the existentialist experience. Existentialist thought is not understood without the existentialist experience. The course aims at being an event (Ereignis).  

As a philosophical school existentialism has re-appropriated so-called real-life issues: Birth as a naked given (thrownness), Life as an indisputable matter of overwhelming “fact” (facticity) and Death as the lifelong haunting of nothingness, the relentless imminence of Despair (Angst) as an unyielding looming Threat (finitude) to everyday existence. These are the general themes that motivate existentialist thinking. They will be addressed directly through the examination of more specific questions: the im/possibility of freedom, the un/reality of im/mortality, the condition of in/authenticity, individuality & community, truth & subjectivity, being & nothingness, existence & essence, suicide & absurdity, boredom & anxiety, temporality & eternity, faith & reason, among many other questions.  

Some of the authors we will consult are Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, Martin Buber, Edith Stein, Martin Heidegger, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry & Wilhelm Reich.  

Section: 001 / CRN: 58360

ONLINE / Full-Term

Instructor: Gatsch

This course explores Epistemology, the branch of philosophy concerned with the study and theory of knowledge. Is knowledge simply a justified true belief, or is there more to it than that? When is it reasonable to claim that we know something rather than that we simply believe it to be true? Can we know things that we do not experience directly? When all is said and done, can I ever be certain that I’m not simply a brain in a vat? Or that what I see is really what I see and not a clever illusion?  

I this course we will explore a wide variety of topics in epistemology and hopefully come to a better understanding of what we know, what we don’t know, and what it means to make knowledge claims at all. 

Required Text: 

Section: 003 / CRN: 57698

ONLINE / Full-Term

Instructor: Becker

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.  No prerequisites.  Grades based on quizzes, homework, and exams. 

Text: Bergmann, Moor, and Nelson, The Logic Book 6/e (McGraw-Hill).  Consider renting the book.  It’s one of the best available, but the most recent addition has a significant number of typos and is quite expensive.

Section: 001 / CRN: 38489

MWF 1000-1050 / Full-Term

Instructor: Haulotte

Ethical theory is the branch of philosophy where philosophers attempt to thematize the good. This class aims to proceed systematically through major theories of morality from both historical and contemporary sources. We will address questions such as: What is the good? What makes something good? Does morality focus on producing good actions, good persons, or good results? Are there ever exceptions to ethical rules? Can we know whether actions are right or wrong? Are we ever correct to make such judgments? Are emotions ever relevant to morality? What are moral facts? Do animals deserve moral consideration? What should I do? Working through these questions we will investigate figures in the history of ethical thought such as Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Peter Singer, Christine Korsgaard, G.E.M. Anscombe and Audre Lorde among others. Assignments will consist of an in-class presentation and a final paper. 

Section: 001 / CRN: 60457

TR 1230-1345 / Full-Term

Instructor: Gerber 

This course explores some of the main issues in environmental ethics.  We will be looking at our relationship with non-human nature and evaluating the underlying values of this relationship including aesthetic, intrinsic, utilitarian, ecological, and personal value. We explore how these values and an understanding of ecology shape our discussion of environmental issues such as climate change, species extinction, ecological restoration, and wilderness.  

Course Material:  

• Christopher Preston, Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries that Change How We Think about Animals 
• Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants 
• Collection of essays on Canvas 

Section: 001 / CRN: 60458

TR 1400-1515 / Full-Term

Instructor: Thomas

Social and political philosophy isn’t about the wranglings of politicians and government—it’s about the purpose and meaning of human existence. What is the full meaning of human dignity and happiness?  What values and priorities do we want for our communities? Is human flourishing a matter of conquering nature itself, or a matter of learning to understand and enhance nature, including our own?  What should be the obligation of the community to the individual, and the individual to the community?  What is good leadership?  In good societies, what are the roles of love and friendship, contemplation and activism, justice and divinity?  Can we be both patriots of our homeland and cosmopolitans, citizens of the world beyond our home borders?   

These are questions of classical social and political philosophy--the philosophy of ancient, medieval, and early modern thinkers—and, particularly, thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, and Machiavelli.  This course takes as a basic premise that although these thinkers are older and pre-modern, they have much to teach us about the ills and crises and puzzles that beset contemporary individual and community life. 

Course requirements include: required class attendance and participation, thoughtful reading of assigned texts, short discussion posts/response papers, occasional quizzes, and one or two take-home exams. 

Section: 001 / CRN: 55815

T 1600-1830 / Full-Term

Instructor: Johnston

F.W.J. Schelling is a notoriously protean thinker in the history of philosophy.  Meteorically rising to fame in the mid-1790s as the Wunderkind protégé of the post-Kantian transcendental idealist J.G. Fichte, Schelling soon publicly repudiates Fichte’s framework in 1801.  During the immediately following years of the early nineteenth century, he proceeds to produce and abandon in rapid succession a series of different philosophical systems, including, perhaps most famously, various versions of a philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie).  From 1794 until 1809, Schelling, despite his multiple metamorphoses throughout this period, remains a significant and recognizable representative of German idealism (along with Immanuel Kant, Fichte, and G.W.F. Hegel).  However, starting in 1809, he pointedly breaks with the entire orientation of German idealism, becoming arguably the first major, historically important post-idealist critic of this idealism.  What are sometimes labeled by scholars Schelling’s “middle” and “late” periods, taken together, span a lengthy stretch of his intellectual itinerary running from 1809 until shortly before his death in 1854.  The Schelling of 1809 and after fairly can be identified as the forefather of the later-nineteenth-century developments of both existentialism and materialism.  Indeed, the audiences at the older Schelling’s University of Berlin lectures of the 1840s included such figures as Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Engels, and Mikhail Bakunin.  Both Kierkegaard’s and Karl Marx’s different multiple criticisms of Hegelian philosophy in particular can be seen to have been anticipated already by Schelling.  In this seminar, we will examine the post-1809 Schelling specifically as the ancestor of subsequent existentialist and materialist currents in the history of European philosophy.  Texts by Schelling to be covered include:  Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, “Stuttgart Seminars,” The Ages of the World, Clara—or, on Nature’s Connection to the Spirit World, On the History of Modern Philosophy, The Grounding of Positive Philosophy, and Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology.

Section: 001 / CRN: 60460

W 1300-1530 / Full-Term

Instructor: Taber

An introduction to Indian philosophy from the standpoint of the question, What does it mean to know something? We will first consider how this question arose in ancient India in the context of the evolution of practices of debate (text: excerpts from the Carakasaṃitā). We will study early attempts to define perception and their broader philosophical implications (excerpts from the Nyāyasūtra and its commentaries and Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya). We will also look at Indian theories of inference (Nyāyabhāṣya and Pramāṇasamuccaya). Another important topic will be the debate about the nature of epistemic justification itself, in particular, whether it is “intrinsic” or “extrinsic,” and more generally, whether Indian epistemology is fundamentally “externalist” in orientation (Dharmakīrti and Kumārila). Finally, we will take up the question whether skepticism plays an important role in Indian epistemology, as it has in Western epistemology (Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu).

In studying these topics we will read both original sources (in translation, provided as PDFs) and analytical (i.e., exegetical and interpretive) studies by modern scholars.

Requirement: a final paper.

Required texts:

Stephen Phillips, Epistemology in Classical India (Sorry! It’s a bit expensive!)

Ethan Mills, Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India (about $30 from Amazon)

Recommended:

Jonathan Stoltz, Illuminating the Mind

Section: 002 / CRN: 52651

MW 1300-1530 / Second-Half

Instructor: Becker

Let’s start with the assumption that concepts are components of thoughts. For example, when someone believes that cats are mammals, they accept as true the thought that cats are mammals, and that thought has, as components, the concepts CAT and MAMMAL.  (We’ll set ‘are’ aside for now!)  Let’s also assume that we express our thoughts in language.  We express the thought that cats are mammals by uttering, assertively, “Cats are mammals,” and this gets the thought across because ‘cat’ means cat (which expresses the concept CAT) and ‘mammal’ means mammal (expresses the concept MAMMAL). 

What then, is a concept? What is linguistic meaning?  Are they the same thing?  If not, how do we distinguish them?  (Notice, by the way, that I have distinguished them above, at least formally.  Thoughts underlined, concepts in all caps, utterances with double quotes, mention of linguistic express in single quotes, and linguistic meaning in italics.)  Why does it matter?

It matters very generally, philosophically, if we want to investigate the nature of mind and the nature of language and we don’t want to prejudice the topics by running them together. 

It matters in analytic philosophy because it centrally involves (or at least used to centrally involve) conceptual analysis as a tool for clarifying ideas (such as cause, law (legal and more commonly scientific), person, freedom, knowledge) and thereby generating truthful implications about their natures.  But if conceptual analysis is the same thing as giving the linguistic meaning of a term, then why isn’t it just a trivial exercise—just a matter of “unpacking” what’s already there rather than any kind of deep or even at all interesting philosophical project?  (Think here of the paradox of analysis.  If conceptual analysis is just an exercise in giving synonyms for a word, then it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.  So what’s the point?)  And worse, if Quine is right, there are no sentences that are true in virtue of meaning anyway.  So if concepts are linguistic meanings, conceptual analysis is either (according to the paradox) trivial or (according to Quine) impossible.

It matters to a major project in contemporary philosophy centered on conceptual engineering—on making our concepts better for various philosophical, logical, ethical, or social purposes.  But if concepts are just linguistic meanings, then if we revise what we mean by a word to serve one of those purposes, are we not just changing the concept rather than making it better?  So aren’t we just changing the topic?  What kind of progress is that?  And if concepts are not linguistic meanings, then what is conceptual engineering anyway?

We will begin the course with a very broad overview of theories of concepts.  But if we are going to get anywhere, we will soon have to find a focus.  To this end, we will read a couple seminal papers by Frege and then move on to works on semantic externalism by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, exploring their implications for language and meaning, concepts and mind.  We will spend three or four weeks or so digging into this material and the various issues that arise from it.  We’ll then spend a couple weeks on conceptual engineering, and a week on conceptual analysis.

The course takes place in an eight-week format.  The readings are dense and difficult, so the structure of the course will be somewhat unique.  On Wednesdays, I will present philosophical overviews of key ideas.  On Mondays, students will give presentations, generating further discussion, on readings that articulate, develop, defend, and/or criticize those ideas.

Readings furnished as .pdf’s.  Grade based on two or three presentations and a final paper.

Section: 002 / CRN: 60464

TR 1400-1515 / Full-Term

Instructor: Harter

What is justice? What is a good life? What counts as education? What can philosophy achieve? What is truth? Is art political? These are some of the questions you would think about if you read Plato’s Republic. It is one of the few major philosophical works that have shaped and impacted the history of philosophy decisively for centuries. It is a landmark of Greek philosophy that has framed the conversation about ontology and metaphysics, education, aesthetics, ethics, and politics. This course will help students to improve their familiarity with Greek philosophy by introducing them to what could be considered Plato’s masterpiece. Besides its influence, Plato’s work is a fascinating achievement in itself: it is a sort of a “total work of philosophy”, which offers a coherent and articulated vision of major philosophical issues as well as reflects on the nature and the status of philosophy itself. It is also a “work of art,” given how Plato deploys his talent as a writer (despite his criticism of poets!), which serves his narrative by making full use of rhetorical and poetical devices. We will pay close attention to the literary aspect of the Republic, which has philosophical implications, especially regarding the way Plato considered what the activity of philosophy should consist in.

This course will propose a complete and patient reading of the text and require students to spend time understanding it on its own terms. Students should expect to dive into the details of the text and strive to develop a charitable interpretation that resorts to the multiple resources the text has to offer. Focusing on this single work will allow us to discuss contemporary scholarship and students should expect to read secondary literature besides the primary text. We will not, however, reduce the Republic to a historical curiosity, and will also consider it critically as a work making claims that have purchase on some of the issues contemporary philosophy is still struggling with: questions of power, of political leadership, of justice, of the kind of society we want to live in, and the kind of life we want to live. Assignments will combine commentaries of small passages and a final paper.

Section: 001 / CRN: 36479

TR 1230-1345 / Full-Term

Instructor: Thomson

What is the relationship between philosophy and literature?  How should we understand the border between these two domains?  In order to answer those questions rigorously, we would first need to know both:  What is “philosophy”? and:  What is “literature”?  Hasn’t “philosophy” been understood, since Plato, as that discipline (or meta-discipline) responsible for asking (“ontological”) questions of the form, “What is X?” — including not only “What is literature?” but also “What is philosophy?”?  If so, then wouldn’t it be a kind of philosophical apostasy to imagine that literature could illuminate philosophy about itself?  Is it obvious, however, that the question “What is philosophy?” can be answered from entirely within philosophy?  If not, if addressing this “purest” of philosophical questions actually requires stepping outside or beyond philosophy (so as to be able to get it in view), then would not “literature” be one of the names for this outside?  But then what form would the answer take?  Would it be literary?  Or philosophical?  Or, would it not rather be — in some yet to be clarified sense — both?  

            Of course, those philosophers who like to imagine philosophy as a science rather than an art will tend to envision the domains of philosophy and literature as dichotomous categories or complementary sets (sharing no intersection).  Such philosophers might admit that literature can be philosophically interesting, but they will also suspect that a work which attempts to be both philosophy and literature is likely to succeed at neither.  Any yet, didn’t the first philosopher to exclude the poets from his philosophical realm do so while writing in the literary form of a dialogue?  Plato was not himself blind to the paradoxes entailed by his literary-philosophical exclusion of literary philosophy.  It is rather, perhaps, as if Plato realized that literature could only be banished from philosophy by a literary philosophy, a philosophy which implicitly undermines the very exclusion that helps define it by establishing its borders (and thereby also opening these alleged borders to policing, crossing, undermining, blurring, and so on).  As if externalizing this struggle, the recent history of philosophy — from Kierkegaard and Heidegger to Derrida and Irigaray and beyond — is full of important philosophical works written in a seemingly “literary” style (whatever that might be, or not be, and perhaps it means nothing more than having any style at all), styles (always in the plural) coexisting unhappily alongside the persistent suspicion that literary philosophy remains hopelessly (or permanently) dilettante, if not simply oxymoronic, at best a productive confusion, waiting to be sorted out by clearer heads (as it were).  

In order to question this philosophical prejudice from the side of philosophy (but without thereby taking philosophy’s side), to explore it by seeking to understand one of its most powerful (and undeniably dangerous) answers, our course will focus on the self-described greatest work of the most influential philosopher between Hegel and Heidegger, namely Friedrich Nietzsche.  Nietzsche self-consciously situates his own “greatest” work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra:  A Book for All and None, at the intersection of the philosophical and the literary, and thereby calls this border profoundly into question — and with it the entire post-Platonic philosophical (or metaphysical) order it both presupposes and reinforces.  Our simple yet ambitious goal will be to learn to read this book, a book which seeks to teach its (real or true) readers how to read it (by requiring us to learn what Nietzsche calls “the art of slow reading,” a reading sensitive to and capable of doing justice to poetic polysemy).  This will be our way of seeking to understand—both from within and without—what it can mean to think philosophy andliterature together (as well as what dangerous explosions such a collision may cause, and how we might think through such real dangers today, perhaps even as “today,” as the very current that continues to drive our current, late-modern age).  

Course Requirements:  Although the sheer amount of reading should not be too onerous (as this is a course in “the art of slow reading,” after all), this course will require us to grapple almost constantly with some surprisingly dense and difficult reading.  The course is thus intended for careful, diligent, and ambitious students capable of grappling creatively and open-mindedly with a famously challenging and influential text.  To facilitate your understanding of this work, attendance is required.  (If I conclude, unhappily, that class attendance needs to be enforced, that will be done with brief and unannounced in-class quizzes on the assigned reading.  These may be made up only in the cases of medical or other emergencies.  To be clear, I truly hope not to have to give such “pop quizzes” at all, but that will depend on student attendance.)  Final course grades will be based on any such quizzes (10%) and (much more significantly) on one in-class presentation (20%) with two short but carefully composed and highly polished papers making up the rest of the grade (for undergraduates), with two in-class presentations (20%) plus one final research paper (determining the grade for graduate students).  (It will explain and facilitate this in the first few classes, but it will ultimately be students’ own responsibility to make sure they get on the schedule to do an in-class presentation [or, for graduate students, two] on a chapter of the book [and, in the likely case that we fall behind the syllabus, to be in class on whatever day we actually reach that chapter], or else [in the case of relevant ARC accommodations] to arrange an alternative, written assignment.)  

Learning goal:  To learn to practice what Nietzsche seeks to teach us as “the art of slow reading.”  Indeed, the basic learning goal of this course is as simple to state as it may prove difficult to achieve, namely:  To help you learn to understand—that is, read, appreciate, and critique, incorporate and begin to move beyond—Nietzsche’s deeply challenging and profoundly influential philosophico-literary work.     

Required text:  Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, W. Kaufmann, ed. (NY:  Penguin).  (Given that the translation is always the first interpretation, the German original, Also sprach Zarathustra, is also recommended, and will be ordered for the class.  Anyone interested in Nietzsche’s own words or working on their German will want to be sure to consult it carefully.)  

Section: 001 / CRN: 60466

W 1600-1830 / Full-Term

Instructor: Thomson

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is widely considered one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century.  This seminar will focus on his most famous and influential work, Being and Time (1927).  Here in his early, unfinished 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 (especially its “modern” age).  We will read and discuss the entire work, then briefly conclude by seeking to understand why Being and Time remained permanently unfinished and why Heidegger’s philosophical views began to shift so profoundly soon afterward.  

This course is good (indeed, indispensable) preparation for understanding most subsequent work in Continental philosophy and the other theoretical humanities, which often take Heidegger’s insights as their own point of philosophical departure.  For example, Heidegger’s work decisively shaped the concepts and concerns of such major continental thinkers as Agamben, Arendt, Badiou, Baudrillard, Blanchot, Butler, Cavell, Deleuze, Derrida, Dreyfus, Foucault, Gadamer, Irigaray, Lacan, Levinas, Marcuse, Rorty, Taylor, Vattimo, and Žižek—and this remains the case even where these thinkers approach Heidegger’s thought quite critically (as they all do, in their own distinctive and interesting ways).  One therefore needs to understand Heidegger in order to understand where these thinkers are coming from, even if his is a thinking they seek (more and less successfully) to move beyond, and Being and Time is probably the very best place to begin.  

Prerequisites:  Graduate standing, some background in philosophy, or consent of instructor (which will depend on your willingness to observe the following requirements).  Course Requirements:  This course will require a good deal of difficult and challenging reading.  As this is a class in the art of slow reading, you will be required to do the reading ahead of time and bring the appropriate book with you to class.  If it becomes necessary to enforce attendance or preparation (which I very much hope it won’t), that will be done with brief in-class quizzes on the reading assigned for that day’s class.   Grades will be based on any such quizzes (for a maximum of 10% of your grade), with the rest of your grade split between two high-quality philosophy papers or, for graduate students, one polished research paper.  Please note that use of cell-phones, laptops, and other computerized devices during class is prohibited (unless my specific permission has been given to use them) because they are distracting to me and your colleagues.  

Required text:  1. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York:  Harper, 2008; hereafter “B&T”).  Recommended Texts:  1. Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology:  Technology and the Politics of the University (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); 2.  M. Wrathall, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Being and Time  (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2013); 3. Braver, ed., Division III of Heidegger's Being and Time: The Unanswered Question of Being (Cambridge, MA:  MIT, 2015);  4). Thomson, Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2011); 5). Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993 [1927]); and 6).  Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, J. Stambaugh, trans. (Albany:  SUNY, 1996). (We will be using the Macquarrie and Robinson translation in class, so that is the edition you will need (and which is the only “required” text in the class), but it can often help to have another translation to compare, plus the Stambaugh translation has some of Heidegger’s often fascinating later marginalia inserted as footnotes.)    

Section: 001 / CRN: 60454

T 1600-1830 / Full-Term

Instructor: Johnston

F.W.J. Schelling is a notoriously protean thinker in the history of philosophy.  Meteorically rising to fame in the mid-1790s as the Wunderkind protégé of the post-Kantian transcendental idealist J.G. Fichte, Schelling soon publicly repudiates Fichte’s framework in 1801.  During the immediately following years of the early nineteenth century, he proceeds to produce and abandon in rapid succession a series of different philosophical systems, including, perhaps most famously, various versions of a philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie).  From 1794 until 1809, Schelling, despite his multiple metamorphoses throughout this period, remains a significant and recognizable representative of German idealism (along with Immanuel Kant, Fichte, and G.W.F. Hegel).  However, starting in 1809, he pointedly breaks with the entire orientation of German idealism, becoming arguably the first major, historically important post-idealist critic of this idealism.  What are sometimes labeled by scholars Schelling’s “middle” and “late” periods, taken together, span a lengthy stretch of his intellectual itinerary running from 1809 until shortly before his death in 1854.  The Schelling of 1809 and after fairly can be identified as the forefather of the later-nineteenth-century developments of both existentialism and materialism.  Indeed, the audiences at the older Schelling’s University of Berlin lectures of the 1840s included such figures as Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Engels, and Mikhail Bakunin.  Both Kierkegaard’s and Karl Marx’s different multiple criticisms of Hegelian philosophy in particular can be seen to have been anticipated already by Schelling.  In this seminar, we will examine the post-1809 Schelling specifically as the ancestor of subsequent existentialist and materialist currents in the history of European philosophy.  Texts by Schelling to be covered include:  Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, “Stuttgart Seminars,” The Ages of the World, Clara—or, on Nature’s Connection to the Spirit World, On the History of Modern Philosophy, The Grounding of Positive Philosophy, and Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology.

Section: 001 / CRN: 60459

W 1300-1530 / Full-Term

Instructor: Taber

An introduction to Indian philosophy from the standpoint of the question, What does it mean to know something? We will first consider how this question arose in ancient India in the context of the evolution of practices of debate (text: excerpts from the Carakasaṃitā). We will study early attempts to define perception and their broader philosophical implications (excerpts from the Nyāyasūtra and its commentaries and Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya). We will also look at Indian theories of inference (Nyāyabhāṣya and Pramāṇasamuccaya). Another important topic will be the debate about the nature of epistemic justification itself, in particular, whether it is “intrinsic” or “extrinsic,” and more generally, whether Indian epistemology is fundamentally “externalist” in orientation (Dharmakīrti and Kumārila). Finally, we will take up the question whether skepticism plays an important role in Indian epistemology, as it has in Western epistemology (Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu).

In studying these topics we will read both original sources (in translation, provided as PDFs) and analytical (i.e., exegetical and interpretive) studies by modern scholars.

Requirement: a final paper.

Required texts:

Stephen Phillips, Epistemology in Classical India (Sorry! It’s a bit expensive!)

Ethan Mills, Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India (about $30 from Amazon)

Recommended:

Jonathan Stoltz, Illuminating the Mind

Section: 002 / CRN: 52653

MW 1300-1530 / Second-Half

Instructor: Becker

Let’s start with the assumption that concepts are components of thoughts. For example, when someone believes that cats are mammals, they accept as true the thought that cats are mammals, and that thought has, as components, the concepts CAT and MAMMAL.  (We’ll set ‘are’ aside for now!)  Let’s also assume that we express our thoughts in language.  We express the thought that cats are mammals by uttering, assertively, “Cats are mammals,” and this gets the thought across because ‘cat’ means cat (which expresses the concept CAT) and ‘mammal’ means mammal (expresses the concept MAMMAL). 

What then, is a concept? What is linguistic meaning?  Are they the same thing?  If not, how do we distinguish them?  (Notice, by the way, that I have distinguished them above, at least formally.  Thoughts underlined, concepts in all caps, utterances with double quotes, mention of linguistic express in single quotes, and linguistic meaning in italics.)  Why does it matter?

It matters very generally, philosophically, if we want to investigate the nature of mind and the nature of language and we don’t want to prejudice the topics by running them together. 

It matters in analytic philosophy because it centrally involves (or at least used to centrally involve) conceptual analysis as a tool for clarifying ideas (such as cause, law (legal and more commonly scientific), person, freedom, knowledge) and thereby generating truthful implications about their natures.  But if conceptual analysis is the same thing as giving the linguistic meaning of a term, then why isn’t it just a trivial exercise—just a matter of “unpacking” what’s already there rather than any kind of deep or even at all interesting philosophical project?  (Think here of the paradox of analysis.  If conceptual analysis is just an exercise in giving synonyms for a word, then it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.  So what’s the point?)  And worse, if Quine is right, there are no sentences that are true in virtue of meaning anyway.  So if concepts are linguistic meanings, conceptual analysis is either (according to the paradox) trivial or (according to Quine) impossible.

It matters to a major project in contemporary philosophy centered on conceptual engineering—on making our concepts better for various philosophical, logical, ethical, or social purposes.  But if concepts are just linguistic meanings, then if we revise what we mean by a word to serve one of those purposes, are we not just changing the concept rather than making it better?  So aren’t we just changing the topic?  What kind of progress is that?  And if concepts are not linguistic meanings, then what is conceptual engineering anyway?

We will begin the course with a very broad overview of theories of concepts.  But if we are going to get anywhere, we will soon have to find a focus.  To this end, we will read a couple seminal papers by Frege and then move on to works on semantic externalism by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, exploring their implications for language and meaning, concepts and mind.  We will spend three or four weeks or so digging into this material and the various issues that arise from it.  We’ll then spend a couple weeks on conceptual engineering, and a week on conceptual analysis.

The course takes place in an eight-week format.  The readings are dense and difficult, so the structure of the course will be somewhat unique.  On Wednesdays, I will present philosophical overviews of key ideas.  On Mondays, students will give presentations, generating further discussion, on readings that articulate, develop, defend, and/or criticize those ideas.

Readings furnished as .pdf’s.  Grade based on two or three presentations and a final paper.

Section: 001 / CRN: 60461

M 1600-1830 / Full-Term

Instructor: Livingston

This graduate-level seminar will be a comprehensive overview of the “analytic” tradition in twentieth-century and contemporary philosophy, with a particular view to understanding the historical and continuing significance of the tradition’s methods and results for the problems of the phenomena of sense, truth, and modality in relation to the broader problems of philosophy and of contemporary life.  Beginning with Gottlob Frege’s discovery of quantificational logic and his foundational investigations into the objectivity of sense as mode of presentation, as well as the inaugural moment of Russell and Moore’s decisive rejection of Hegelian idealism and speculative metaphysics in favor of the new methods of analysis, we will centrally consider the form and implications of the “linguistic turn” first taken by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. We will then consider the formal theory of truth first proposed by Tarski in the 1930s, reflecting in particular on the critical relationship of both of these developments to the claims and projects of historical and traditional philosophical metaphysics.    Following this, we will consider the implications of the new method and project of logical/linguistic analysis for the simultaneously philosophical and modernist-utopian project of the Vienna Circle’s “scientific conception of the world” in the 1920s and early 1930s, as well as the critical development of this project into the forms of logical and linguistic analysis and reflection on the foundations and structure of meaning, mind, and ethics in the intersubjective practice of language that began to characterize the tradition in its postwar phase (especially in the work of philosophers such as Quine, Davidson, Anscombe, and Sellars).  We will then consider the suggestions of a (partial) rehabilitation of “metaphysics” that accompanied the new developments of views about reference, modality and semantics by philosophers such as Saul Kripke and David Lewis, beginning in the 1960s, and their radical implications for the longstanding philosophical problems of meaning, modality, and truth.  We will conclude by considering two more recent analytic texts that aim (in whole or in part) to rehabilitate aspects of an idealist understanding of truth, judgment and knowledge: John McDowell’s 1991 Mind and World, and Irad Kimhi’s more recent (2018) Thinking and Being.

Throughout our inquiry, rather than understanding the analytic tradition’s methods and commitments as representing only a narrow “scientism” or a simply mechanical application of logical formalism, we will try to elicit those aspects of the tradition’s methods and results that are most consequential for the real problems of intersubjective and linguistically mediated global life and politics today.

Enrolled students will be asked to write short weekly response papers (ungraded, 1-2 pages), a midterm paper (4-8 pages) and a final paper (8-12 pages).

Section: 002 / CRN: 60465

TR 1400-1515 / Full-Term

Instructor: Harter

What is justice? What is a good life? What counts as education? What can philosophy achieve? What is truth? Is art political? These are some of the questions you would think about if you read Plato’s Republic. It is one of the few major philosophical works that have shaped and impacted the history of philosophy decisively for centuries. It is a landmark of Greek philosophy that has framed the conversation about ontology and metaphysics, education, aesthetics, ethics, and politics. This course will help students to improve their familiarity with Greek philosophy by introducing them to what could be considered Plato’s masterpiece. Besides its influence, Plato’s work is a fascinating achievement in itself: it is a sort of a “total work of philosophy”, which offers a coherent and articulated vision of major philosophical issues as well as reflects on the nature and the status of philosophy itself. It is also a “work of art,” given how Plato deploys his talent as a writer (despite his criticism of poets!), which serves his narrative by making full use of rhetorical and poetical devices. We will pay close attention to the literary aspect of the Republic, which has philosophical implications, especially regarding the way Plato considered what the activity of philosophy should consist in.

This course will propose a complete and patient reading of the text and require students to spend time understanding it on its own terms. Students should expect to dive into the details of the text and strive to develop a charitable interpretation that resorts to the multiple resources the text has to offer. Focusing on this single work will allow us to discuss contemporary scholarship and students should expect to read secondary literature besides the primary text. We will not, however, reduce the Republic to a historical curiosity, and will also consider it critically as a work making claims that have purchase on some of the issues contemporary philosophy is still struggling with: questions of power, of political leadership, of justice, of the kind of society we want to live in, and the kind of life we want to live. Assignments will combine commentaries of small passages and a final paper.

Section: 001 / CRN: 60455

TR 1230-1345 / Full-Term

Instructor: Thomson

What is the relationship between philosophy and literature?  How should we understand the border between these two domains?  In order to answer those questions rigorously, we would first need to know both:  What is “philosophy”? and:  What is “literature”?  Hasn’t “philosophy” been understood, since Plato, as that discipline (or meta-discipline) responsible for asking (“ontological”) questions of the form, “What is X?” — including not only “What is literature?” but also “What is philosophy?”?  If so, then wouldn’t it be a kind of philosophical apostasy to imagine that literature could illuminate philosophy about itself?  Is it obvious, however, that the question “What is philosophy?” can be answered from entirely within philosophy?  If not, if addressing this “purest” of philosophical questions actually requires stepping outside or beyond philosophy (so as to be able to get it in view), then would not “literature” be one of the names for this outside?  But then what form would the answer take?  Would it be literary?  Or philosophical?  Or, would it not rather be — in some yet to be clarified sense — both?  

            Of course, those philosophers who like to imagine philosophy as a science rather than an art will tend to envision the domains of philosophy and literature as dichotomous categories or complementary sets (sharing no intersection).  Such philosophers might admit that literature can be philosophically interesting, but they will also suspect that a work which attempts to be both philosophy and literature is likely to succeed at neither.  Any yet, didn’t the first philosopher to exclude the poets from his philosophical realm do so while writing in the literary form of a dialogue?  Plato was not himself blind to the paradoxes entailed by his literary-philosophical exclusion of literary philosophy.  It is rather, perhaps, as if Plato realized that literature could only be banished from philosophy by a literary philosophy, a philosophy which implicitly undermines the very exclusion that helps define it by establishing its borders (and thereby also opening these alleged borders to policing, crossing, undermining, blurring, and so on).  As if externalizing this struggle, the recent history of philosophy — from Kierkegaard and Heidegger to Derrida and Irigaray and beyond — is full of important philosophical works written in a seemingly “literary” style (whatever that might be, or not be, and perhaps it means nothing more than having any style at all), styles (always in the plural) coexisting unhappily alongside the persistent suspicion that literary philosophy remains hopelessly (or permanently) dilettante, if not simply oxymoronic, at best a productive confusion, waiting to be sorted out by clearer heads (as it were).  

In order to question this philosophical prejudice from the side of philosophy (but without thereby taking philosophy’s side), to explore it by seeking to understand one of its most powerful (and undeniably dangerous) answers, our course will focus on the self-described greatest work of the most influential philosopher between Hegel and Heidegger, namely Friedrich Nietzsche.  Nietzsche self-consciously situates his own “greatest” work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra:  A Book for All and None, at the intersection of the philosophical and the literary, and thereby calls this border profoundly into question — and with it the entire post-Platonic philosophical (or metaphysical) order it both presupposes and reinforces.  Our simple yet ambitious goal will be to learn to read this book, a book which seeks to teach its (real or true) readers how to read it (by requiring us to learn what Nietzsche calls “the art of slow reading,” a reading sensitive to and capable of doing justice to poetic polysemy).  This will be our way of seeking to understand—both from within and without—what it can mean to think philosophy andliterature together (as well as what dangerous explosions such a collision may cause, and how we might think through such real dangers today, perhaps even as “today,” as the very current that continues to drive our current, late-modern age).  

Course Requirements:  Although the sheer amount of reading should not be too onerous (as this is a course in “the art of slow reading,” after all), this course will require us to grapple almost constantly with some surprisingly dense and difficult reading.  The course is thus intended for careful, diligent, and ambitious students capable of grappling creatively and open-mindedly with a famously challenging and influential text.  To facilitate your understanding of this work, attendance is required.  (If I conclude, unhappily, that class attendance needs to be enforced, that will be done with brief and unannounced in-class quizzes on the assigned reading.  These may be made up only in the cases of medical or other emergencies.  To be clear, I truly hope not to have to give such “pop quizzes” at all, but that will depend on student attendance.)  Final course grades will be based on any such quizzes (10%) and (much more significantly) on one in-class presentation (20%) with two short but carefully composed and highly polished papers making up the rest of the grade (for undergraduates), with two in-class presentations (20%) plus one final research paper (determining the grade for graduate students).  (It will explain and facilitate this in the first few classes, but it will ultimately be students’ own responsibility to make sure they get on the schedule to do an in-class presentation [or, for graduate students, two] on a chapter of the book [and, in the likely case that we fall behind the syllabus, to be in class on whatever day we actually reach that chapter], or else [in the case of relevant ARC accommodations] to arrange an alternative, written assignment.)  

Learning goal:  To learn to practice what Nietzsche seeks to teach us as “the art of slow reading.”  Indeed, the basic learning goal of this course is as simple to state as it may prove difficult to achieve, namely:  To help you learn to understand—that is, read, appreciate, and critique, incorporate and begin to move beyond—Nietzsche’s deeply challenging and profoundly influential philosophico-literary work.     

Required text:  Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, W. Kaufmann, ed. (NY:  Penguin).  (Given that the translation is always the first interpretation, the German original, Also sprach Zarathustra, is also recommended, and will be ordered for the class.  Anyone interested in Nietzsche’s own words or working on their German will want to be sure to consult it carefully.)  

Section: 001 / CRN: 60467

W 1600-1830 / Full-Term

Instructor: Thomson

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is widely considered one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century.  This seminar will focus on his most famous and influential work, Being and Time (1927).  Here in his early, unfinished 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 (especially its “modern” age).  We will read and discuss the entire work, then briefly conclude by seeking to understand why Being and Time remained permanently unfinished and why Heidegger’s philosophical views began to shift so profoundly soon afterward.  

This course is good (indeed, indispensable) preparation for understanding most subsequent work in Continental philosophy and the other theoretical humanities, which often take Heidegger’s insights as their own point of philosophical departure.  For example, Heidegger’s work decisively shaped the concepts and concerns of such major continental thinkers as Agamben, Arendt, Badiou, Baudrillard, Blanchot, Butler, Cavell, Deleuze, Derrida, Dreyfus, Foucault, Gadamer, Irigaray, Lacan, Levinas, Marcuse, Rorty, Taylor, Vattimo, and Žižek—and this remains the case even where these thinkers approach Heidegger’s thought quite critically (as they all do, in their own distinctive and interesting ways).  One therefore needs to understand Heidegger in order to understand where these thinkers are coming from, even if his is a thinking they seek (more and less successfully) to move beyond, and Being and Time is probably the very best place to begin.  

Prerequisites:  Graduate standing, some background in philosophy, or consent of instructor (which will depend on your willingness to observe the following requirements).  Course Requirements:  This course will require a good deal of difficult and challenging reading.  As this is a class in the art of slow reading, you will be required to do the reading ahead of time and bring the appropriate book with you to class.  If it becomes necessary to enforce attendance or preparation (which I very much hope it won’t), that will be done with brief in-class quizzes on the reading assigned for that day’s class.   Grades will be based on any such quizzes (for a maximum of 10% of your grade), with the rest of your grade split between two high-quality philosophy papers or, for graduate students, one polished research paper.  Please note that use of cell-phones, laptops, and other computerized devices during class is prohibited (unless my specific permission has been given to use them) because they are distracting to me and your colleagues.  

Required text:  1. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York:  Harper, 2008; hereafter “B&T”).  Recommended Texts:  1. Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology:  Technology and the Politics of the University (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); 2.  M. Wrathall, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Being and Time  (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2013); 3. Braver, ed., Division III of Heidegger's Being and Time: The Unanswered Question of Being (Cambridge, MA:  MIT, 2015);  4). Thomson, Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2011); 5). Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993 [1927]); and 6).  Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, J. Stambaugh, trans. (Albany:  SUNY, 1996). (We will be using the Macquarrie and Robinson translation in class, so that is the edition you will need (and which is the only “required” text in the class), but it can often help to have another translation to compare, plus the Stambaugh translation has some of Heidegger’s often fascinating later marginalia inserted as footnotes.)