PHIL

Joseph Soloveitchik was one of the most important philosophers of religion of the twentieth-century.  Firmly rooted in the tradition of Biblical and Talmudic texts and culture, Soloveitchik elaborated a phenomenology of Jewish self-consciousness and religious experience that has significant implications for the philosophy of religion more generally.  This course will consist of a study of some of his major books and essays.  Topics to be covered may include the nature of Halakhic man and Soloveitchik’s philosophical anthropology, the problem of faith in the modern world, questions of suffering, finitude and human emotions, the nature of prayer, the idea of cleaving to God.  Soloveitchik will be studied both from within the Jewish tradition and in the context of the classical questions of the philosophy of religion. (I)

Painting raises philosophical questions, if only because one can wonder why some particular pieces of the overall visible may attract more visual attention than others, which appear nevertheless just besides the former.  In fact, this privilege comes mostly from the radical (although subtle) difference between common law phenomena (objects) and saturated phenomena.  Among them, the two main rival postulations are idol and icon.  Concerning the idol, one may ask what precisely is its function?  How far can it reach the thing itself even more than objective knowledge (the examples of Courbet and Cezanne will be privileged)?  Concerning the icon, one may open the road to theological questions:  how far can the invisible God be aimed at through visible images?  Is iconoclasm the only option?  What theological arguments could support the claim for icons (Nicene Council II)?  Can the concept of icon be extended to other issues than “the icon of the invisible God” (Colossians 1, 15)?

The course is an historical survey and conceptual introduction to fundamental philosophical questions concerning the nature of the logos (judgments, proposition) that have stood at center of philosophy since the contributions of Plato and Aristotle .   This survey will give us an opportunity to reflect on the idea of philosophical history and the nature its continuity.  We shall discuss theories of the logos in Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Medieval and Early modern philosophy, Kant and German idealism, Frege and Wittgenstein.

The course will be devoted to this book. We shall pay special attention to Heidegger’s understanding of the human being as being-in-the-world, which we shall place, historically and conceptually, in relation to ideas concerning the being of the human in German idealism and in classical Aristotelian philosophy.

Readings from Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Collingwood among others. (A) (I)

In this class we will investigate what it is for a society to be just. In what sense are the members of a just society equal? What freedoms does a just society protect? Must a just society be a democracy? What economic arrangements are compatible with justice? In the second portion of the class we will consider one pressing injustice in our society in light of our previous philosophical conclusions. Possible candidates include, but are not limited to, racial inequality, economic inequality, and gender hierarchy. Here our goal will be to combine our philosophical theories with empirical evidence in order to identify, diagnose, and effectively respond to actual injustice. (A)

This lecture/discussion course examines Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s intellectual development, from the time he wrote Sorrows of Young Werther through the final stages of Faust. Along the way, we read a selection of Goethe’s plays, poetry, and travel literature. We also examine his scientific work, especially his theory of color and his morphological theories. On the philosophical side, we discuss Goethe’s coming to terms with Kant (especially the latter’s Third Critique) and his adoption of Schelling’s transcendental idealism. The theme uniting the exploration of the various works of Goethe is the unity of the artistic and scientific understanding of nature, especially as he exemplified that unity in “the eternal feminine.”

A close reading of Philosophical Investigations. Topics include: meaning, justification, rule following, inference, sensation, intentionality, and the nature of philosophy. Supplementary readings will be drawn from Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics and other later writings. (B) (III)

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.