PHIL

Topic: Moral Luck (instructor: P. Brixel)

Late in his career, the English philosopher Bernard Williams wrote, ‘Philosophy, and in particular moral philosophy, is still deeply attached to giving good news.’ In particular, he thought that the philosophical tradition that we have inherited is attached to the consoling thought that how well we live is in the most important respects under our control. This thought can be defended on the basis of a pair of commitments: that how well we live from a moral point of view is under our control, and that moral considerations are the most important considerations. Williams challenged both of these commitments, arguing that morality does not have the supreme importance traditionally attributed to it and that moral value is not immune to luck—that there is such a thing as ‘moral luck’. In this course, we will examine these ideas. More specifically, we will cover three topics: 1. In the first part of the course, we will examine the idea that certain activities or onditions are of supreme importance, all other things being worthless in omparison. This idea is associated with the ancient thought that the virtuous person cannot be harmed. In relation to this idea, will discuss the meaning and the possibility of tragedy. 2. In the second part of the course, we will examine the idea that moral value is immune to luck. We will discuss the problem of moral luck due to incomplete control over the morally significant consequences of one’s actions (‘consequential luck’), moral luck due to incomplete control over morally significant aspects of one’s character (‘constitutive luck’), and moral luck due to ignorance of the moral significance of what one is doing (‘moral ignorance’). 3. Throughout the course, we will aim to gain clarity about the metaphysics of agency, control, luck, and the self.

Topic: Contemporary Liberalism (instructor: J. Butcher)

Liberalism is the dominant tradition of political thought in contemporary political philosophy, and its vocabulary is the lingua franca of the political discourse of Western political societies. One of the chief commitments of liberalism is that a just society is necessarily a free society. Otherwise put, liberalism conceives of citizens as having an overriding interest in some type of freedom. But this abstract commitment is susceptible to a wide variety of competing and incompatible specifications. In this course, we will examine the ways in which various liberal political philosophers have specified the notion of freedom and conceived of its role in the just society. The guiding questions of the course are: (1) What does it mean to say that citizens have a fundamental interest in freedom, and (2) What obligations of justice does this fundamental interest generate on the part of the state? We will begin by reading a sizeable portion of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (weeks 1-3), which contains his argument that citizens have a right to a set of basic liberties that cannot be given up even if it is in citizens’ economic interest to do so. In week 4, we will consider an objection to Rawls’s argument advanced by H.L.A. Hart and Rawls’s response. Next, we will consider various alternatives to Rawls’s approach (weeks 5-6), namely those of Joseph Raz, Philip Pettit, and Martha Nussbaum. These alternatives conceive of freedom as autonomy (the capacity to make certain choices), non-domination (freedom from dependence on the choices of others), and capability (the opportunity to develop one’s capacities to become a fully functioning human being), respectively.  We will then move onto a view called political liberalism (weeks 7-9). This view holds a conception of freedom according to which a citizen is free when he is capable of endorsing the legal framework of his society - in particular the way this framework employs coercive power against and determines the life chances of citizens. We will conclude (week 10) with Joseph Raz’s influential criticism of this view.

Topic: Philosophical Conceptions of Pleasure in Classical Antiquity (instructor: D. Jagannathan)

What is pleasure? In what way is it valuable? How does pleasure relate to action, passion, and the good life? These are the questions we shall investigate in this course by working through the leading theories of pleasure in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy from Aristippus of Cyrene through Plato and Aristotle down to the Stoics and the Epicureans. In addition to proceeding chronologically and seeing how later thinkers respond to or refine the arguments of earlier ones, the course will take up three broad themes: (i) the value of pleasure, (ii) what sorts of pleasures there are and whether pleasure is unified, and (iii) how pleasure figures in goal-directed behavior in us and in animals. The final week of the course will be devoted to the reception of ancient ideas about pleasure in two modern thinkers, John Stuart Mill and Gilbert Ryle. Some experience working with Plato and Aristotle is desirable; no knowledge of Greek or Latin is required.

Topic: Moral Luck (instructor: P. Brixel)
Late in his career, the English philosopher Bernard Williams wrote, ‘Philosophy, and in particular moral philosophy, is still deeply attached to giving good news.’ In particular, he thought that the philosophical tradition that we have inherited is attached to the consoling thought that how well we live is in the most important respects under our control. This thought can be defended on the basis of a pair of commitments: that how well we live from a moral point of view is under our control, and that moral considerations are the most important considerations. Williams challenged both of these commitments, arguing that morality does not have the supreme importance traditionally attributed to it and that moral value is not immune to luck—that there is such a thing as ‘moral luck’. In this course, we will examine these ideas. More specifically, we will cover three topics: 1. In the first part of the course, we will examine the idea that certain activities or onditions are of supreme importance, all other things being worthless in omparison. This idea is associated with the ancient thought that the virtuous person cannot be harmed. In relation to this idea, will discuss the meaning and the possibility of tragedy. 2. In the second part of the course, we will examine the idea that moral value is immune to luck. We will discuss the problem of moral luck due to incomplete control over the morally significant consequences of one’s actions (‘consequential luck’), moral luck due to incomplete control over morally significant aspects of one’s character (‘constitutive luck’), and moral luck due to ignorance of the moral significance of what one is doing (‘moral ignorance’). 3. Throughout the course, we will aim to gain clarity about the metaphysics of agency, control, luck, and the self.

Topic: Contemporary Liberalism (instructor: J. Butcher)

Liberalism is the dominant tradition of political thought in contemporary political philosophy, and its vocabulary is the lingua franca of the political discourse of Western political societies. One of the chief commitments of liberalism is that a just society is necessarily a free society. Otherwise put, liberalism conceives of citizens as having an overriding interest in some type of freedom. But this abstract commitment is susceptible to a wide variety of competing and incompatible specifications. In this course, we will examine the ways in which various liberal political philosophers have specified the notion of freedom and conceived of its role in the just society. The guiding questions of the course are: (1) What does it mean to say that citizens have a fundamental interest in freedom, and (2) What obligations of justice does this fundamental interest generate on the part of the state? We will begin by reading a sizeable portion of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (weeks 1-3), which contains his argument that citizens have a right to a set of basic liberties that cannot be given up even if it is in citizens’ economic interest to do so. In week 4, we will consider an objection to Rawls’s argument advanced by H.L.A. Hart and Rawls’s response. Next, we will consider various alternatives to Rawls’s approach (weeks 5-6), namely those of Joseph Raz, Philip Pettit, and Martha Nussbaum. These alternatives conceive of freedom as autonomy (the capacity to make certain choices), non-domination (freedom from dependence on the choices of others), and capability (the opportunity to develop one’s capacities to become a fully functioning human being), respectively.  We will then move onto a view called political liberalism (weeks 7-9). This view holds a conception of freedom according to which a citizen is free when he is capable of endorsing the legal framework of his society - in particular the way this framework employs coercive power against and determines the life chances of citizens. We will conclude (week 10) with Joseph Raz’s influential criticism of this view.

Topic: Philosophical Conceptions of Pleasure in Classical Antiquity (instructor: D. Jagannathan)

What is pleasure? In what way is it valuable? How does pleasure relate to action, passion, and the good life? These are the questions we shall investigate in this course by working through the leading theories of pleasure in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy from Aristippus of Cyrene through Plato and Aristotle down to the Stoics and the Epicureans. In addition to proceeding chronologically and seeing how later thinkers respond to or refine the arguments of earlier ones, the course will take up three broad themes: (i) the value of pleasure, (ii) what sorts of pleasures there are and whether pleasure is unified, and (iii) how pleasure figures in goal-directed behavior in us and in animals. The final week of the course will be devoted to the reception of ancient ideas about pleasure in two modern thinkers, John Stuart Mill and Gilbert Ryle. Some experience working with Plato and Aristotle is desirable; no knowledge of Greek or Latin is required.

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.

This course centers on a close reading of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, with some attention to his writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. How should a history of sexuality take into account scientific theories, social relations of power, and different experiences of the self? We discuss the contrasting descriptions and conceptions of sexual behavior before and after the emergence of a science of sexuality. Other writers influenced by and critical of Foucault are also discussed.

This course explores the question ‘What is art?’ when applied to visual works of art. Another way of forming the question is: ‘What differentiates a work of art from something which is not a work of art?’. The course follows several attempts to answer this question including the representational, expressive, formal, emotive, conventional and historic theories. In the second part of the course, we will address the question: ‘How do we best understand a work of art?’. We will see how these questions are related. Each topic in this course will focus on a single work of art so that the philosophical reading will be understood and evaluated in light of a guided analysis of the work in question.

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)

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

This course will have four foci: 1) a close reading of the verba ipsissima of Philosophical Investigations and a handful of closely related writings by Wittgenstein; 2) an overview of the history of the reception of the book and some of the most influential readings it has occasioned; 3) a discussion of a handful of recent debates in the secondary literature on some its most contested sequences of sections – including those on ostensive definition, the critique of Wittgenstein’s early work, the nature of philosophy, rule-following, practices/forms of life, the so-called private language argument, the nature of first-person authority, and the relations between meaning and use, inner and outer, criteria and mental states, sensations and discursive forms of mindedness; 4) an assessment of how best to interpret the overall aims, methods, and teachings that confer unity on the work as a whole, with special attention to the conception of philosophy at work in the Philosophical Investigations . Throughout the course, we will seek to evaluate some of the most influential options put forward in the secondary literature regarding how to read the book, with a special focus on various aspects of the controversy surrounding so-called “quietest” and “anti-quietest” interpretations of the aims and methods of the work. Readings will include texts by Albritton, Anscombe, Baker, Brandom, Browne, Cavell, Child, Cook, Diamond, Goldfarb, Hacker, Kripke, Kuusela, Malcolm, McDowell, Pitcher, Schulte, Stroud, and Wright. (III)

This course continues the development of a new analytical and phenomenological approach to the relationship between revelation and reason (revelatio et ratio), between theology and philosophy, as they are constructed in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought, and in close relationship to their patristic precursors.  Specific themes to be engaged include: relevation as paradox ; the different forms of knowledge implied in ratio (with discussion of Scheleiermacher, Hegel, Spinoza, Kant and Fichte); and the role of the Trinity between relevation and reason (with particular attention to Basil and Augustine, as well as Hegel, Schelling and von Balthasar). (II)

What does it mean to develop a critical reading of a literary text (or artwork or film)? What is the object, the logic, the justification of critical judgment? This question – or package of questions –has been raised since antiquity (Aristotle), but has become especially pressing since historical variation emerged into the foreground of aesthetic consideration in the course of the nineteenth century. How can we understand the act of criticism in the absence of clearly formulated norms? If innovation predominates in literary and artistic production, then what is the critic to base her judgment on? In this class, seminar we will examine this question (and its various solutions) as it unfolds from Kant (Critique of the Power of Judgment) to Cavell, with such intermediate stations along the way as Friedrich Schlegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. The seminar will also consider para dogmatic examples of criticism (e.g., Auerbach, Frye, Barthes), while examining the very idea of a classic.