Departmental Courses

In the Physics, Aristotle lays out the general concepts and principles governing his teachings about the natural world.  His approach is both philosophically sophisticated and quite different from that of modern science.  We will work through substantial selections from Books I-III, with the help of Aquinas’s glosses, which make them more digestible without diluting them.  Topics include the subject and procedure of natural science, the relation of that science to metaphysics and mathematics, matter and form as principles of change, the concept of nature, causality, chance, teleology, the nature of motion, action and passion, and the categories of being. (B)

In this course, we will engage with one of the fundamental texts of practical philosophy, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In addition to reading the text closely, we will critically discuss secondary literature, as well as contemporary attempts to revive and enlist Aristotle, with the aim of familiarizing ourselves with the work’s themes, understanding major fault lines in its interpretation, and appreciating its enduring significance. Topics to be considered include happiness and the good life, virtue, and practical reasoning. (A)

The aim of this course is to explore the tensions and convergences between two of the most profoundly important areas of environmental philosophy. "Ecocentrism" is the view that holistic systems such as ecosystems can be ethically considerable or "count" in a way somewhat comparable to human persons, and such a philosophical perspective has been shared by many prominent forms of environmentalism, from Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic to Deep Ecology to the worldviews of many Native American and Indigenous peoples. For some prominent environmental philosophers, a commitment to ecocentrism is the defining test of whether one is truly an environmental philosopher. "Environmental Racism" is one of the defining elements of environmental injustice, the way in which environmental crises and existential threats often reflect systemic discrimination, oppression, and domination in their disproportionate adverse impact on peoples of color, women, the global poor, LGBTQ populations, and Indigenous Peoples. Although historically, some have claimed that ecocentric organizations such as Greenpeace have neglected the problems of environmental injustice and racism in their quest to, e.g., "save the whales," a deeper analysis reveals a far more complicated picture, with many affinities and alliances between ecocentrists and activists seeking environmental justice. (A)

In this course we will read, write, talk, and think about good and bad, right and wrong, in human life and conduct.  In doing so, we usually will be preoccupied with questions about the relation between morality and reason.  Almost everyone agrees that doing what morality asks or requires (and refraining from doing what morality prohibits) usually means losing out on at least some opportunities to do as one likes. There is normally something one would rather do than, say, keep a promise.  The most detailed accounts of reason in action, however, suggest that reason is meant to help us fare well.  Faring well is often a matter of managing to do well for oneself, often by finding ways of doing as one likes. If morality works against the pursuit of self-interest, and reason helps to further pursuit of self-interest, it looks as though there is a fundamental conflict between reason and morality, between acting well and faring well. (A)

This class will be a survey of major themes in contemporary philosophy of science. Topics will include inductivism, Popper's deductivism, Kuhn’s conception of science, and Bayesianism. Towards the end of the course as a case study we will look at the debate about whether the existence of multiple universes should be considered a genuine scientific hypothesis. (B)

This course introduces students to philosophical debates about the foundations and methodology of economics as a field of study. Together we’ll examine questions such as the following: What exactly is economics and what are its aims? Is the field defined by its subject matter or its methodology? Should positive economics be regarded as a value-neutral enterprise? Or does it inevitably need to make value-laden assumptions—about, for instance, rationality, well-being, distributive justice, etc.—that stand in need of justification? Should there be limits to what can be bought and sold on markets—and, if so, what should those limits be? Readings will include works by philosophers and economists. (A)

At the time of Michel Foucault’s death in 1984, both his fame and his capacity to inspire controversy were at their height. Foucault’s views on power, knowledge, and genealogy were widely influential during his lifetime. Forty years after Foucault’s death, interest in Foucault is once more on the rise. The purpose of this class is to provide a philosophical introduction to Foucault’s ideas. Topics to be discussed include madness and social construction, the historical preconditions of knowledge, genealogical critique, reform’s perilous potential, and the “technologies of the self”. Particular attention will be given throughout to how Foucault engages with Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. We will end by examining Foucault’s reception in the work of Judith Butler, as well as contemporary criticisms of Foucault. (A)

An examination of ancient Greek philosophical texts that are foundational for Western philosophy, especially the work of Plato and Aristotle. Topics will include: the nature and possibility of knowledge and its role in human life; the nature of the soul; virtue; happiness and the human good.

An introduction to philosophical thought about the nature of language. The questions we will address include: What is meaning? What is truth? How does language relate to thought? How do languages relate to each other? What is metaphor? What is fiction? The focus will be on classic work in the analytic tradition (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Tarski, Quine, Austin, Grice, Davidson, Donnellan, Putnam, Searle, Kaplan, Kripke) but we will also read, and relate to this modern work, some current work in the philosophical literature and some seminal discussions of language in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. (B)

Topic: Personhood and Moral Status

Contemporary accounts of ethics often include a notion of “moral status” or “moral considerability.” Beings with moral status are those whose interests must be taken into account in ethical decision-making, or who matter for their own sake. Among the various levels of moral status that a being can have, the highest is “full moral status.” Beings with full moral status are often also referred to as (in a particular sense) “persons.” Persons are taken to have a special or perhaps unique ethical significance.

In this course we will survey the contemporary literature on personhood and moral status to attempt to answer two questions: “What makes a being a person?” and “What ethical implications do different theories of personhood have?”

In trying to answer the first question, we will consider different accounts of the grounds of or criteria for having full moral status: accounts based on cognitive capacities, on morally significant relationships, and on species membership. We will investigate whether personhood is a property that the same being can gain or lose, or whether it is the case that “once a person, always a person.”

To answer the second question, we will look at consequentialist and non-consequentialist ways of understanding personhood and full moral status. We will examine challenges to the notion that all human beings are persons from moral status revisionists like Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan, and responses to them from writers like Agnieska Jaworska, Eva Kittay, and Anselm Mueller. We will also consider the implications of the different theories we’ve discussed for issues like abortion, disability rights, and the treatment of animals.

In this seminar we engage in an in-depth examination of a focused philosophical topic—in a manner akin to that of a graduate seminar. Readings are challenging, but there is no presumption of prior expertise in the course topic.

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in the Autumn Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in the Winter Quarter. The Senior Seminar meets for two quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

An introduction to the concepts and principles of symbolic logic. We learn the syntax and semantics of truth-functional and first-order quantificational logic, and apply the resultant conceptual framework to the analysis of valid and invalid arguments, the structure of formal languages, and logical relations among sentences of ordinary discourse. Occasionally we will venture into topics in philosophy of language and philosophical logic, but our primary focus is on acquiring a facility with symbolic logic as such.

This course provides an introduction to logic for students of philosophy. It is aimed at students who possess more mathematical training than can be expected of typical philosophy majors, but who wish to study logic not just as a branch of mathematics but as a method for philosophical analysis. (B) (II)

The seminar will explore the fundamental issues in Hegel’s philosophy by means of attention to the texts where he most clearly states his ambitions: his early essay, "The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy"; The Introduction to his "Phenomenology of Spirit"; The long Introduction to his "Encyclopedia Logic"; The Preface and Introduction to his "Philosophy of Right," and the Introduction to his "Lectures on Fine Art."

In this class we explore the philosophical foundations of human rights, investigating theories of how our shared humanity in the context of an interdependent world gives rise to obligations of justice. Webegin by asking what rights are, how they are distinguished from other part of morality, and what role they play in our social and political life. But rights come in many varieties, and we are interested in human rights in particular. In later weeks, we will ask what makes something a human right, and how are human rights different from other kinds of rights. We will consider a number of contemporary philosophers (and one historian) who attempt to answer this question, including James Griffin, Joseph Raz, John Rawls, John Tasioulas, Samuel Moyn, Jiewuh Song, and Martha Nussbaum. Throughout we will be asking questions such as, "What makes something a human right?" "What role does human dignity play in grounding our human rights?" "Are human rights historical?" "What role does the nation and the individual play in our account of human rights?" "When can one nation legitimately intervene in the affairs of another nation?" "How can we respect the demands of justice while also respecting cultural difference?" "How do human rights relate to global inequality and markets?" (A)

This course is designed to provide MAPH students – especially those interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in Philosophy – with an introduction to some recent debates between philosophers working in the analytic tradition. The course is, however, neither a history of analytic philosophy nor an overview of the discipline as it currently stands. The point of the course is primarily to introduce the distinctive style and method – or styles and methods – of philosophizing in the analytic tradition, through brief explorations of some currently hotly debated topics in the field.

In the first part of the course, we’ll be discussing an argument to the effect that: in order for radical skepticism about empirical knowledge not to be intellectually obligatory, we must understand ourselves as enjoying a very particular kind of self-consciousness. In the remainder of the course, we’ll be trying to get into view what an adequate account of that sort of self-consciousness might look like. (B) (II)

The course will start by looking at the intellectual connections of several major figures in 18th and 19th century philosophy of religion. We will examine David Hume’s “Essay on Miracles” and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, John Stuart Mill’s “The Utility of Religion,” Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, and selections from William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. In the last third of the course we will examine more recent writers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Emmanuel Levinas. The goal of the course is to present and to assess different ways in which philosophers have conceived of and argued for or against religious belief. (IV)

This will be an introductory course on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. The seminar will be organized around the follow proposal: the book is meant to reveal the sort of understanding that is at stake whenever a philosophical problem arises. It teaches that such understanding is not a form of knowledge — and in particular not scientific knowledge— of whether or why something is the case. Its clarification of the sort of understanding at issue here allows for a reading according to which the Tractatus, contrary to what most commentators assume, seeks to affirm rather than to cancel philosophy. It affirms it as a fundamental concern with understanding distinct from science or from reason.

The aim of the course is to understand and assess central aspects of Aristotle's account of actions and agency. We will locate his views within the context of his discussion of (a) the relation between psychological and physical states, processes, and activities and (b) the value of acting well.

Karl Marx’s account of “those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails” remains one of the most influential yet contentious theories ever committed to paper. Often invoked in times of turmoil, his name has come to mean different things to different people. Yet it is not always clear in fact just what his theory is, doubtless in part because his writings are quite challenging to read. In this course, students will engage fundamentally with Marx’s writings to gain a clear idea of his theory for themselves. We will do so by reading volume 1 of Marx’s Capital as well as selections from volumes 2 and 3 and Theories of Surplus Value. We will approach Marx own his own terms, considering context and comparison with other highlights from the history of political economy only where they are relevant. Topics which we will address include Marx’s view of “alienation”, “commodity fetishism”, and “class struggle”, but also labor, employment, money, capital, profit, and crisis.

We will be reading Paul Reiter’s new translation of Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (Princeton 2024), which students must bring to every class. The course will be held in English and there are no prerequisites. But students should read Marx’s short essay, “Wage Labor and Capital”, to prepare in advance of our first meeting. (A)

What is the relationship between physical processes in the brain and body and the processes of thought and consciousness that constitute our mental life? Philosophers and others have puzzled over this question for millennia. Many have concluded it to be intractable. In recent decades, the field of cognitive science--encompassing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and other disciplines--has proposed a new form of answer. The driving idea is that the interaction of the mental and the physical may be understood via a third level of analysis: that of the computational. This course offers a critical introduction to the elements of this approach, and surveys some of the alternative models and theories that fall within it. Readings are drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. (B) (II)

This will be a careful reading of what is widely regarded as the greatest work of modern philosophy, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Our principal aims will be to understand the problems Kant seeks to address and the significance of his famous doctrine of "transcendental idealism". Topics will include: the role of mind in the constitution of experience; the nature of space and time; the relation between self-knowledge and knowledge of objects; how causal claims can be justified by experience; whether free will is possible; the relation between appearance and reality; the possibility of metaphysics. (B) (IV)

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.

This course meets in Autumn and Winter quarters.

We will consider the popular question: “What is love? And why does it hurt so bad?” Our systematic point of departure will be the analysis of love in contemporary analytic philosophy. In the second part of the class, we will turn to the dialectic of love as it presents itself in Hegel’s work and its critical reception in Feminist Philosophy. The conundrum we encounter will be the following. On the one hand, Hegel’s speculative concept appears to render intelligible the modern ideal of love that feels well familiar from inside intuition but doesn’t seem to be quite captured by the received analysis of love. In one way or another, the analytic accounts on offer seem to imply a tension between two aspects that intuitively both belong to the concept of true love: being with the beloved and realizing the freedom traditionally thought to be essential to being a person. Hegel’s speculative account is meant to resolve the apparent tension. As he has it, love’s bond is a liberation: love sets you free. His articulation of this thought promises to make sense of the intuitively familiar and yet on the reflection deeply puzzling idea that it is precisely the devotion to the other through which one finds oneself. On the other hand, the explanation Hegel offers appears to entail his problematic views on patriarchy. We will investigate whether this is just Hegel’s fault or perhaps the contradiction in which we live. Against this background, we will return to Aristotle and the question whether and why we need friends and lovers for the good life. (I)

Though unfinished, Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time is one of the most influential contributions to 20th century philosophy. In it, Heidegger proposes nothing less than an exposition (in fact, a restatement) of the question of Being — a question whose subject matter is inherently intertwined with the concerns and affairs of the inquirer. Systematizing and indeed radicalizing ideas from Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Husserl, Being and Time is at the same time a critique of the Western philosophical tradition’s neglect of the Seinsfrage. We will proceed systematically through Being and Time, seeking to understand as well as to contextualize its basic moves, motivations, and key arguments. (IV)

We will read selections from, and secondary literature on, some early Socratic dialogues in order to engage with a set of Socratic theses on desire, motivation, and value: (1) Everyone desires the good (or: what he believes to be good?) (Meno, Gorgias, Lysis) ; (2) Everyone does what he believes (or knows?) to be best (Protagoras, Apology) (3)  It is better to be wronged than to do wrong (Gorgias, Apology) (4) Only good men do wrong voluntarily (Hippias Minor) (5) Courage/Moderation is Wisdom (Laches, Protagoras, Charmides). We will want to examine these views both for consistency; for their individual merits; and in order to see whether we can put them together into a distinctively Socratic ethical point of view. (III) 

This will be a study of Kant’s third and final Critique, his Critique of Judgment.  We will attempt to survey they book as a whole, including Kant’s influential account of the nature of judgments of beauty and sublimity, as well as his theory of “teleological” judgment and its place in our understanding of the natural world.  We will also seek to comprehend and assess Kant’s claim that these studies constitute essential contributions to a critique of our cognitive power of judgment, a critique which is crucial to the completion of his larger “critical” project surveying the scope and limits of human cognition as a whole. (IV) 

Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter.

Advanced Study: Philosophy

An introduction to the concepts and principles of symbolic logic. We learn the syntax and semantics of truth-functional and first-order quantificational logic, and apply the resultant conceptual framework to the analysis of valid and invalid arguments, the structure of formal languages, and logical relations among sentences of ordinary discourse. Occasionally we will venture into topics in philosophy of language and philosophical logic, but our primary focus is on acquiring a facility with symbolic logic as such.

Ontology is, in Quine’s phrase, the study of “what there is.” Ontologists debate the existence and nature of numbers, properties, propositions, ordinary objects, possibilia, and so on. Metaontology asks about the status of this discourse and tries to characterize its goals and prospects. What does it mean to say that something exists? Are there criteria of ‘ontological commitment’? How do the things ontologists debate relate to what ordinary people say? After an historical introduction, the first part of the course will survey a few first-order ontological debates. The remainder of the course will consider varieties of realism and of anti-realism in metaontology. We will read authors such as Rudolf Carnap, W. V. O. Quine, Peter van Inwagen, Ted Sider, Hilary Putnam, and Amie Thomasson. (A)

This course will be an introduction to the philosophy of law. The first third will cover some historical classics: Plato's Crito, and selections from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Kant's Doctrine of Right, Hegel's Outline of the Philosophy of Right, and Austin's The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. The second third of the course will cover some classics of postwar Anglo-American jurisprudence, including selections from H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Richard Posner, and Ernest Weinrib. The final third of the course will explore in a little further detail philosophical problems that arise in the following areas: the philosophy of tort law, theories of constitutional interpretation, and feminist jurisprudence. (A)

Perhaps it is better to give than to receive, but exactly how much giving ought one to engage in and to whom or what?  Recent ethical and philosophical developments such as the effective altruism movement suggest that relatively affluent individuals are ethically bound to donate a very large percentage of their resources to worthy causes—for example, saving as many lives as they possibly can, wherever in the world those lives may be.  And charitable giving or philanthropy is not only a matter of individual giving, but also of giving by foundations, corporations, non-profits, non-governmental and various governmental agencies, and other organizational entities that play a very significant role in the modern world.  How, for example, does an institution like the University of Chicago engage in and justify its philanthropic activities?  Can one generalize about the various rationales for philanthropy, whether individual or institutional?  Why do individuals or organizations engage in philanthropy, and do they do so well or badly, for good reasons, bad reasons, or no coherent reasons?

This course will afford a broad, critical philosophical and historical overview of philanthropy, examining its various contexts and justifications, and contrasting charitable giving with other ethical demands, particularly the demands of justice. How do charity and justice relate to each other?  Would charity even be needed in a fully just world?  And does philanthropy in its current forms aid or hinder the pursuit of social justice, in both local and global contexts?  This course will feature a number of guest speakers and be developed in active conversation with the work of the UChicago Civic Knowledge Project and Office of Civic Engagement.  Students will also be presented with some practical opportunities to engage reflectively in deciding whether, why and how to donate a certain limited amount of (course provided) funding. (A)

This course combines economic theory (the theory of the firm), legal theory (labor law), and labor history, with political philosophy to examine questions of justice for workers that are often ignored in academic political philosophy. The course begins by considering very basic questions from economic theory, including what markets are, and why production in the economy is organized through firms, and what economists have to say about why firms are arranged so hierarchically. Given this background, we next turns to consider injustices at the work, including worker domination, exploitation, and the casualization of employment. We consider responses including universal basic income that decouples access to goods from work; worker organization and resistance through the labor movement and tools such as collective bargaining; and finally, the reorganization of the economy to foster either shared control over firms or worker cooperatives. Along the way we consider the right to strike, the connection of race and labor, and different visions of a more just future for workers. (A)

The autonomous life: proponents of this ideal portray it as central to living well, while detractors consider it one of modernity’s more dangerous delusions. But what is autonomy, and why is it capable of inspiring such controversy? This class considers the twists and turns of autonomy’s fate within and beyond the German Idealist tradition. We will start by considering autonomy and freedom in the work of Kant and Hegel, as well as more contemporary philosophers such as Korsgaard who are in dialogue with them. We will then consider how their theories of autonomy are complicated and expanded by Douglass and Fanon, before moving on to autonomy’s contemporary critics from ‘postmodern’ and communitarian and religious perspectives. Themes examined will include putative links between autonomy and authenticity, between autonomy and secularity, and between autonomy and individualism. This course takes its title from Karl Ameriks’ Kant and the Fate of Autonomy. (A)

In this course we will explore some of the central questions in epistemology and metaphysics. In epistemology, these questions will include: What is knowledge? What facts or states justify a belief? How can the threat of skepticism be adequately answered? How do we know what we (seem to) know about mathematics and morality? In metaphysics, these questions will include: What is time? What is the best account of personal identity across time? Do we have free will? We will also discuss how the construction of a theory of knowledge ought to relate to the construction of a metaphysical theory-roughly speaking, what comes first, epistemology or metaphysics? (B)

This course introduces students to issues and questions that have defined scholarship in the philosophy of mind as well as to prominent theories in the field. Starting from Descartes and the articulation of a general “mind-body problem,” we will go on to investigate particular mental phenomena (such as beliefs, emotions, sensations, and intentions) by considering what philosophers have said about them, drawing primarily from the 20th century and the analytic tradition. We will read works in Dualism, Identity-Theory, Functionalism, and Eliminativism. Besides offering a brief survey of the field, this course equips students with the resources for evaluating whether some particular view provides an adequate account of human mindedness. (B)

A survey of the thought of some of the most important figures of the period from the fall of Rome to the Scottish Enlightenment. The course will begin with an examination of the medieval hylomorphism of Aquinas and Ockham and then consider its rejection and transformation in the early modern period. Three distinct early modern approaches to philosophy will be discussed in relation to their medieval antecedents: the method of doubt, the principle of sufficient reason, and empiricism. Figures covered may include Ockham, Aquinas, Descartes, Avicenna, Princess Elizabeth, Émilie du Châtelet, Spinoza, Leibniz, Abelard, Berkeley, Hume, and al-Ghazali.

This course is a general survey of African philosophy. We will read a selection of writings from African philosophers, spanning geographical space and historical periods. The tendency for the study of African philosophy is to focus solely on post-colonial writings with texts originally written in French or English. Against this tendency, the course will introduce students to a wider chronology of African philosophy that traverses various historical eras and with an attention to the diversity of the original languages of primary texts (including Ge’ez, Arabic, German, and Latin). In addition to often-studied figures such as Paulin Hountondji and Kwame Gyekye, we will engage with such thinkers as Ahmad Bābā al-Timbukti, Augustine of Hippo, Zara Yaqob, James Africanus Beale Horton, and Anton Wilhelm Amo. Instruction will emphasize the close reading of primary texts within relevant historical contexts. Students will be encouraged to engage African philosophy on its own terms and in conversation with other philosophical traditions.

This will be a course on works by the philosopher Edith Stein. We will read excerpts from Alasdair Macintyre’s Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, as well as Stein’s work on our knowledge of other minds and studies toward a philosophy of being. (B)

Topic: Hegel and Marx: Philosophies of History

This course will survey and compare Hegel’s and Marx’s writings about human history. Questions that will be discussed include: What can philosophical reflection on historical changes reveal? Is there anything necessary (noncontingent) about changes in history? What relation can philosophy have toward the future? Is the philosophy of history a part of practical philosophy? In what ways does Marx’s view differ from Hegel’s philosophy of history? How did Marx’s views on history change over his lifetime? Why are early socialists often thought to have had a technologically deterministic view of human history? What alternative views are available? Can claims of progress in the realization of freedom be defended?

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in the Autumn Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in the Winter Quarter. The Senior Seminar meets for two quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

A fundamental category through which we understand the world is the category of action. This course offers an intensive overview of the metaphysics of action. We will first cover some basics including the relationship between actions, agency, and agents, the range of action kinds, what kind of thing action is, the distinction between basic and nonbasic action, agent nihilism, and the possibility of mental action. Next, in hopes of coming to better understand the nature of action, we will look at how action relates to other phenomena such as reasons, causation, knowledge, control, and normative life. (B) (II)

In this class we explore the philosophical foundations of human rights, investigating theories of how our shared humanity in the context of an interdependent world gives rise to obligations of justice. Webegin by asking what rights are, how they are distinguished from other part of morality, and what role they play in our social and political life. But rights come in many varieties, and we are interested in human rights in particular. In later weeks, we will ask what makes something a human right, and how are human rights different from other kinds of rights. We will consider a number of contemporary philosophers (and one historian) who attempt to answer this question, including James Griffin, Joseph Raz, John Rawls, John Tasioulas, Samuel Moyn, Jiewuh Song, and Martha Nussbaum. Throughout we will be asking questions such as, "What makes something a human right?" "What role does human dignity play in grounding our human rights?" "Are human rights historical?" "What role does the nation and the individual play in our account of human rights?" "When can one nation legitimately intervene in the affairs of another nation?" "How can we respect the demands of justice while also respecting cultural difference?" "How do human rights relate to global inequality and markets?" (A)

The idea that there exist different “races” of human beings is something that many—perhaps even most—people in the United States today take for granted. And yet modern notions of “race” and “racial difference” raise deep philosophical problems: What exactly is race? Is race a natural kind (like water) or a social kind (like citizenship)? If race is a social kind—i.e. something human beings have constructed—are there any good reasons to keep using it? According to many philosophers, these questions cannot be properly analyzed in abstraction from the history of modern racism and the liberation struggles racial oppression has given rise to. Together, we’ll read classic and contemporary texts on these themes by authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis, Charles Mills, Naomi Zack, Chike Jeffers, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Lucius Outlaw. (A)

Epistemology is the study of belief, and addresses questions like “what are we justified in believing?” and “when does a belief count as knowledge?”  This course will provide an overview of Bayesian epistemology, which treats belief as coming in degrees, and addresses questions like “when does rationality require us to be more confident of one proposition than another?", “how should we measure the amount of confirmation that a piece of evidence provides for a theory?”, and “which actions should we choose, based on our judgments about how probable various consequences are?” (B) (II)

How did philosophy come to be understood as a special concern with our language? We shall deal with this question by studying some essential chapters in twenty-first-century philosophy (Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Davidson).

Aristotle said that “first philosophy” is the branch of knowledge that is both most general—having to do with everything—and the most foundational. In this course we will explore various attempts in the history of philosophy to describe and produce such a science, beginning with Plato and Aristotle’s attempts to describe being and ending with Wittgenstein’s skepticism about such a project. We will try to produce a generalization about what first philosophy is and about its possibility and limitations. (B)

We will read selections of Lucretius' magisterial account of a universe composed of atoms. The focus of our inquiry is: how did Lucretius convert a seemingly dry philosophical doctrine about the physical composition of the universe into a gripping message of personal salvation? The selections include Lucretius' vision of an infinite universe, of heaven, and of the hell that humans have created for themselves on earth.

This will be a discussion-centered seminar that facilitates close readings some of Kierkegaard texts:

The Present Age, Fear and Trembling, Sickness Unto Death, and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air. Topics to be considered will include: living in clichés and self-satisfaction, despair, absolute requirements, the demands of ethical life, and becoming a human being. We shall also consider Kierkegaard's forms of writing and manners of persuasion. Students will be expected to write comments each week and to read the comments of others. Our reading each week will be determined by the pace of the group. (IV)                                 

This course introduces non-classical extensions and alternatives to classical logic, and the philosophical debates surrounding them. Topics include modal logic (the logic of possibility and necessity), intuitionistic and many-valued logics (in which sentences may be neither true nor false, or both true and false), and relevant logic (which tries to refine the classical concept of entailment to capture the idea that the premises of arguments should be relevant to their conclusions). 

Students will learn tableau-style proof theories and Kripke frame semantics for a variety of non-classical logics, and will discuss adjacent philosophical issues, including the nature of necessity and possibility, the metaphysics of ordinary objects and fictional characters, the nature of truth, and the relationship between the world and the logical theories we use to describe it. (B) (II)

In this seminar we will explore a set of interrelated topics in the philosophy of action. These include: the purposive structure of practical reason, the nature of the relationship between means and ends, the idea of ‘practical inference’, and the place of causation in the understanding of intentional agency. Course readings comprise a manuscript by the course instructor in conjunction with a constellation of primarily contemporary writings on these topics.

The notion of substance has long been at the center of metaphysical theorizing. Substances are said to be fundamental and independent things, capable of existing on their own, which are the bearers of properties. An account of substance has also been thought central to metaphysics in that the primary sense of ‘being’ is the sense in which substances are beings. But there has been a great deal of controversy over how to give an account of the nature or being of substance, what sorts of things we should count as substances, what we can know of substance, and even whether the notion of substance is intelligible. In this course we will examine a number of influential accounts of substance in medieval, early modern, and contemporary metaphysics. Historical figures we will likely read include Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, Suárez, Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke. Contemporary readings may include texts by Justin Broackes, Kit Fine, Robert Pasnau, Kathrin Koslicki, Michael Della Rocca, and Shamik Dasgupta. (B)

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.

This course meets in Autumn and Winter quarters.

In this course we will read, write, and think about Kant's ethics.  After giving careful attention to the arguments in the Second Critique, portions of the Third Critique, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Metaphysics of Morals, and several other primary texts, we will conclude by working through some contemporary neo-Kantian moral philosophy, paying close attention to work by Christine Korsgaard, David Velleman, Stephen Engstrom, and others. (IV)

The first half of the seminar will introduce some major themes of Marx’s philosophy—especially historical materialism, his economics and analysis of capitalism, his theory of ideology (especially as applied to morality and law), and the early Marx’s views on human nature and human flourishing—while the second half will consider the reception and development of Marx’s ideas about history, the state, ideology, and economics in 20th-century Continental European thought, with readings from, among others, Lukács, Adorno, Kojève, Hilferding, Luxemburg, Gramsci, and others.
 

(II)

Advanced Study: Philosophy

Thomas Aquinas’s account of the goodness and badness that are proper to human actions—moral goodness and badness—is fundamental for his entire ethical teaching. It provides the rationale for his way of dividing human actions into kinds; it sets the reference points for his theory of virtues and vices, which he takes to be nothing other than principles of good and bad actions; it explains the moral function that he ascribes to law; and so on. The aim of this course will be to understand and think about that account. Its fullest presentation is found in Aquinas’s masterpiece, the Summa theologiae. However, the Summa’s approach to ethics is heavily metaphysical, and nowhere is this more true than in its treatment of moral goodness and badness. We shall therefore need to consult background passages from other parts of that work and other works of his, on such metaphysical topics as good and bad in general, powers and their objects, the nature of circumstances, and the relation between intellect and will. We shall also want to consider to what extent the account depends on strictly theological notions. (A)   

An exploration of some of the central questions in metaethics, moral theory, and applied ethics. These questions include the following: are there objective moral truths, as there are (as it seems) objective scientific truths? If so, how can we come to know these truths? Should we make the world as good as we can, or are there moral constraints on what we can do that are not a function of the consequences of our actions? Is the best life a maximally moral life? What distribution of goods in a society satisfies the demands of justice? Can beliefs and desires be immoral, or only actions? What is “moral luck”? What is courage? (A)

Humanity faces a climate crisis. Its effects are already tangible, including a loss of biodiversity and wildlife, rising sea levels and the disappearance of traditional living space, the accumulation of extreme weather events, and increased migration due to growing hostility of previously agreeable and fertile natural environments. And this is nothing to speak of the potentially catastrophic effects of global heating yet to come. In this course, we will discuss both historically influential and recent works that can help us get a better understanding of the ethical challenges of our current situation. Our discussions will center around three thematic questions: What is our relation to nature? In what sense, if any, is climate change a matter of justice? And what are the right ethical ways of addressing our current environmental predicament? (A)

Many of the toughest ethical and political challenges confronting the world today are related to environmental issues: for example, climate change, loss of biodiversity, the unsustainable use of natural resources, pollution and toxic waste, and other threats to the well-being of both present and future generations.  Using both classic and contemporary works, this course will highlight some of the fundamental and unavoidable philosophical questions presented by such environmental issues. Does the environmental crisis demand radically new forms of ethical and political philosophizing and practice?  Must an environmental ethic reject anthropocentrism?  If so, what are the most plausible non-anthropocentric alternatives?  What counts as the proper ethical treatment of non-human animals, living organisms, or ecosystems?  What do the terms “nature” and “wilderness” even mean, and should “natural” environments as such have ethical and/or legal standing?  What fundamental ethical and political perspectives inform such approaches as the “Land Ethic,” ecofeminism, and deep ecology?  Is there a plausible account of environmental justice applicable to both present and future generations?  Are we now in the Anthropocene, and if so, is “adaptation” the best strategy at this historical juncture?  How can the wild, the rural, and the urban all contribute to a better future for Planet Earth? (A)

Most of us seek to be reasonably good people leading what we take to be successful and satisfying lives. There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that most of us fail to live up to our own standards. Worse, we often fail to mark our own failures in ways that could help us improve ourselves. The context in which we try to live good lives is shaped by the vicissitudes of the global economy. The global economy is obviously of interest to those of us studying economics or planning on careers in business. Aspiring entrepreneurs or corporate leaders have clear stakes in understanding practical wisdom in the economic sphere. But anyone who relies upon her pay - or someone else's - to cover her living expenses has some interest in economic life.

In this course, we will bring work in neo-Aristotelian ethics and neo-classical economics into conversation with empirical work from behavioral economics and behavioral ethics, to read, write, talk, and think about cultivating wisdom in our economic dealings. While our focus will be on business, the kinds of problems we will consider, and the ways of addressing these, occur in ordinary life more generally - at home, in academic settings, and in our efforts to participate in the daily production and reproduction of sound modes of social interaction. (A)

In this seminar, we read Plato’s Republic closely and in its entirety. We will attend equally to the epistemological and political aspirations of the text and we will examine its engagement with issues in the fields of psychology, aesthetics, metaphysics, and education. While this course will primarily focus on Plato’s text, the students will have the opportunity to read works from the secondary literature. (B)

What is good sex? Is sexual objectification harmful? Do we have a right to sex? What is sexual consent? This course invites students to engage with these questions and many others within the literature on the philosophy of sex. The centrality of sex and sexuality in human life makes it an apt, albeit complex object of philosophical inquiry. And, whereas many thinkers advance that our sexual lives hold a major influence on most other domains on our existence, we spend little time with intellectual inquiry about sex. In this course, we will engage with some classic texts alongside some of the most exciting recent writings in the philosophy of sex. We will explore such themes and topics as the erotic, sexual desire, perversion, consent, sexual orientation, pornography, prostitution, and sex equality. We will explore these themes through various perspectives, including metaphysics, ethics, and politics. Some of the authors we will read include Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Martha Nussbaum, Timo Airaksinen, Jean-Luc Marion, Raja Halwani, Amia Srinivasan and Manon Garcia among others. (A)

The philosophical ideas and methods of Immanuel Kant's “critical” philosophy set off a revolution that reverberated through 19th-century philosophy.  We will trace the effects of this revolution and the responses to it, focusing specifically on the influence of Kant’s contribution to moral philosophy and its lasting influence on discussions of ethics and political philosophy.  We will begin with a consideration of Kant's famous Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in which he announces his project of grounding all ethical obligation in the very idea of a free will.  We will then consider Hegel's radicalization of this project in his Philosophy of Right, which seeks to derive from the idea of freedom, not just formal constraints on right action, but a determinate, positive conception of what Hegel calls "ethical life".  We will conclude with an examination of some important challenges to the Kantian/Hegelian project in ethical and political theory: Karl Marx’s re-interpretation of the idea of freedom in the economic sphere; Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill’s radicalizations of the ideas of political liberty and equality; and the appropriation and critique of the Enlightenment rhetoric of freedom by writers on racial oppression including Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, and Angela Davis.

What is it to be human and why does it matter? This course invites students to engage the question within the relation between theories of humanism and the histories of dehumanization as pertains to the racialization of Black people. Specific theories of the human have served as foundations of practices of dehumanization, and yet experiences of dehumanization have led to the development of new forms of humanism. In light of histories of enslavement and colonization and the related hierarchies of the human, what is the conceptual basis of the hierarchization within or exclusion from the category of the human? What does it feel like to be dehumanized and how does one adequately respond to such an experience? Some thinkers reject the concept while others reclaim it to inspire new existential outlooks on the world or political struggles. This course will explore the wide literature on these questions, supplementing written texts with other media such as film and music. We will focus on the implications of theories of humanism for the particularly human form of being, the pursuit of the good, and the organization of social life. Engagement in this course will be based on discussion, personal reflection, and the relation of course material to contemporary issues.

This will be a course on philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch’s Existentialists and Mystics. We will read excerpts from Murdoch’s text alongside key figures with whom she engages: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone Weil, and Plato. (B)

Topic: The Human Being in Moral Imagination

Topic: The Critique of Ontotheology

According to Martin Heidegger, metaphysics has failed to confront its own basic question, namely that of the meaning (or truth) of being, on account of an occlusion of the significance of two distinctions. The first distinction is between onto-logic and theo-logic, or between, on the one hand, what, formally, beings are as such, and, on the other hand, the explanatory principle that accounts for it that beings as a whole exist at all. Heidegger claims that metaphysics characteristically attempts to overcome this distinction in a unified “onto-theo-logical” account of the being of beings. The second distinction is between, on the one hand, the being of beings (a topic common to onto-logic and theo-logic), and, on the other hand, being as such. Heidegger claims that metaphysics characteristically forgets this second distinction as it struggles to overcome the first.

This course will critically consider Heidegger’s influential and sweeping “deconstruction” of the tradition, reading historical texts alongside Heidegger’s essays and commentaries, with a view to: understanding the relationship between these two distinctions; assessing the extent to which the distinctions can be drawn univocally (or analogically) across dramatic historical changes in the way philosophers have understood the fundamental concepts of metaphysics; weighing (against the testimony of the tradition and against alternative narratives) the plausibility of Heidegger’s claim that the distinctions have been mistreated or neglected and thus that the question of being has gone unasked; and testing the resources Heidegger purports to uncover for ameliorating this state of affairs. Heidegger thinks a proper appreciation of the question of being will have deep cultural, existential, and theological consequences for us; we will consider, finally, what these consequences may be. This will require in turn reflecting on how such themes as anxiety, fallenness, grace, and thankfulness could be implicated in the question of being, as well as on how being as such can be understood to take place as an event. In addition to Heidegger’s own works, readings may include short texts by Aristotle, Avicenna, Aquinas, Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Reinhold, Hölderlin, Hegel, Rosenzweig, Derrida.

Logic is, and always has been, a branch of philosophy. Why? What is logic? In this course we will explore the nature of logic, and how it relates to thought; to reasoning; to ordinary language; to mathematics; and to philosophy. We will read texts on the subject of logic by Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Black, Prior, Gödel, Kripke, Dummett, Boolos, Putnam, Benacerraf, Harman, Williamson, Priest, and others. The course will be completely non-technical: we will be trying to make philosophical sense of logic. (B)

In the course of discussing how it is that a philosophical problem arises in the first place, Wittgenstein says, “The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent.” This isn’t the only place where Wittgenstein speaks as if being gripped by philosophical problems is a matter of succumbing to illusions--as if a philosophers are magicians who are taken in by their own tricks. In this course, we’ll discuss philosophy and magical performance, with the aim of coming to a deeper understanding of what both are about. We’ll be particularly concerned with Wittgenstein’s picture of what philosophy is and does. Another focus of the course will be the passion of wonder. In the Theaetetus, Plato has Socrates say, “The sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.” And when magicians write about their aesthetic aims, they almost always describe themselves as trying to instill wonder in others. Does magic end where philosophy begins? And what becomes of wonder after philosophy is done with it? (B) (II)

Animals are in trouble all over the world.  Intelligent sentient beings suffer countless injustices at human hands: the cruelties of the factory farming industry, poaching and trophy hunting, assaults on the habitats of many creatures, and innumerable other instances of cruelty and neglect.  Human domination is everywhere: in the seas, where marine mammals die from ingesting plastic, from entanglement with fishing lines, and from lethal harpooning; in the skies, where migratory birds die in large numbers from air pollution and collisions with buildings; and, obviously, on the land, where the habitats of many large mammals have been destroyed almost beyond repair.  Addressing these large problems requires dedicated work and effort. But it also requires a good normative theory to direct our efforts. 

This class is theoretical and philosophical.  Because all good theorizing requires scientific knowledge, we will be reading a good deal of current science about animal abilities and animal lives.  But the focus will be on normative theory.  We will study four theories currently directing practical efforts in animal welfare: the anthropocentric theory of the Non-Human Rights Project; the Utilitarian theory of Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill, and Peter Singer; the Kantian theory of Christine Korsgaard; and an approach using the Capabilities Approach, recently developed by Martha Nussbaum.  We will then study legal implications and current legal problems, in both domestic and international law.

The films of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman are among the most powerful, complicated and philosophically sophisticated portrayals of moral and religious, and failed moral and religious, life in the twentieth century. Bergman is especially concerned with crisis experiences and with related emotional states like anguish, alienation, guilt, despair, loneliness, shame, abandonment, conversion, and the mystery of death. We will watch and discuss eight of his most important films in this course with such issues in mind: Wild Strawberries (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960), Winter Light (1963), Persona (1966), Shame (1968), Cries and Whispers (1973), Autumn Sonata (1978), Fanny and Alexander (1982).

This course will consist of a focused reading of Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics. Our aim will be to understand Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, the significance of experience, and the nature of reasoning. Readings will include some of the Platonic antecedents of Aristotle’s work, including the Theaetetus and Sophist. (B)

We discuss the nature and philosophical implications of the practice of interpretation, focusing especially on the interpretation of philosophy. We will address questions such as: what is interpretation, and at what does it aim? What counts as success or failure? Is the interpretation of philosophy itself a form of philosophy? What is the ethical significance of interpretation? This course will involve a practical element. In addition to reading texts on the theory of interpretation, we will spend time in and out of class developing interpretations of selected philosophical texts. (B)

This course provides an overview of the metaphysics of personal identity, addressing questions like: “What makes an entity a person, rather than a non-person?”, “What does it take for a person to survive, rather than perish?”, “Why is surviving important (if it is)?”, and “What makes you you?”  We will consider a range of theories of personal identity, including nihilism, psychological continuity theories, and narrative approaches. (B) (II)

(B) (II)

This course will consist of a close study of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding alongside Leibniz’s chapter-by-chapter response to Locke in his New Essays on Human Understanding. Locke’s Essay is the great manifesto and development of empiricism, and Leibniz’s New Essays is a detailed, sustained rebuttal of Locke’s book. As such, it is both a fascinating work by one of the giants of rationalism and a text that provides an opportunity to take seriously the idea that philosophy develops through dialogue. Topics to be discussed include innate ideas, necessary truths, reason, experience, substance, essence, personal identity, the nature of mind and body, and freedom, among others. We will also ask larger questions about the nature of the rationalist and empiricist traditions to which these philosophers belong – e.g., the extent to which empiricism is indebted to the experimental sciences, and whether rationalism is best understood as a doctrine concerning the sources of human knowledge or as a metaphysical claim about the intelligibility of being. (B)

Preparing papers to submit to journals for review and revising papers in response to the feedback received from journal editors and referees is an essential part of professional academic life, and students applying for academic positions with no publications to their name are at a disadvantage in today’s highly competitive job market. The Department of Philosophy has therefore instituted the Paper Revision and Publication Workshop to provide our graduate students with support and assistance to prepare papers to submit for publication in academic philosophy journals. The workshop was designed with the following three aims in mind:

1. to provide students with a basic understanding of the various steps involved in publishing in academic journals and to create a forum in which students can solicit concrete advice from faculty members about the publishing process;

2. to direct and actively encourage students to submit at least one paper to a journal for review on a timeline that would allow accepted submissions to be listed as publications on a student’s CV by the time they go on the academic job market; and

3. to create and foster a departmental culture in which the continued revision of work with the ultimate aim of publication in academic journals is viewed as an essential aspect of the professional training of our graduate students and in which both faculty and students work together to establish more ambitious norms for publishing while in graduate school.

This seminar will introduce some of the central concepts of psychoanalysis: Mourning and Melancholia, Repetition and Remembering, Transference, Neurosis, the Unconscious, Identification, Psychodynamic, Eros, Envy, Gratitude, Splitting, Death. The central theme will be how these concepts shed light on human flourishing and the characteristic ways we fail to flourish. Readings from Plato, Aristotle, Freud, Loewald, Lacan, Melanie Klein, Betty Joseph, Hanna Segal and others.

G. E. M. ('Elizabeth') Anscombe wrote on many different topics in the history of philosophy, in theoretical philosophy, and in practical philosophy.  We will read, write, talk, and think about her work in practical philosophy, with special emphases on her writings on action theory, moral psychology, ethics, and practical reason.  Engagement with her work in practical philosophy has become the focus of significant philosophical research by prominent mainstream Anglophone philosophers in recent decades, and we also will engage some work by scholars and theorists whose work is indebted to hers. (I)

Although Kant wrote on theology throughout his philosophical career, contemporary scholarship often sidelines this dimension of Kant’s thinking. This seminar will focus on Kant’s theological work, with the dual aim of understanding Kant’s theological views and assessing how or whether a theological perspective affects one’s interpretation of core features of the Critical philosophy. Potential topics include Kant’s account of the divine mind and the divine will, the account of the most real being (ens realissimum) in the first Critique’s Dialectic, the criticisms of the traditional proofs of the existence of God, the role of God within Kant’s “moral metaphysics”, Kant’s relationship to Baumgarten and Wolff, Pietist themes within Kant’s theology, and connections with post-Kantian Idealist views on both intellectual intuition and theology as such. (IV)

Trans experience raises interesting philosophical questions about how people understand and misunderstand each other as gendered beings, how our internal senses of ourselves relate to the way society perceives us, and how to re-imagine our ideas of a good or normal body.  This graduate seminar explores some of these questions through readings in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy that center trans and feminist perspectives. (I)

Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter.

Advanced Study: Philosophy