PHIL

This course is an introduction to some of the major thinkers and movements in the philosophy of the medieval and early modern periods. This course will aim at providing a broad overview, with special attention to developments in metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of mind. Figures discussed will include Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke and Hume.

In this course, we will read selected texts by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche with an eye toward broaching certain fundamental questions in ethics and the metaphysics of human agency, such as: What are the limits of rational reflection? What consequences might these limits have for our notion of moral responsibility, and our understanding of how to live well? Is ethical persuasion possible, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a person, an agent—and in what sense are personhood and agency something valuable? We will be particularly interested in determining how the stylistic peculiarities of Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s respective authorships afford us a distinctive way of approaching these questions.

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)

Decisions about medical treatment take place in the context of changing health care systems, changing ideas about rights and obligations, and among doctors and patients who have diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. By means of historical, philosophical, and medical readings, this course examines such issues as paternalism, autonomy, the commodification of the body, and the enhancement of mental and/or physical characteristics.

This course will provide a general introduction to the most widely discussed proposals for how to analyze the meaning of counterfactual (or subjunctive) conditional claims, such as “If Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then somebody else would have.” In addition to the standard Stalnaker-Lewis “possible worlds” semantics for counterfactuals, we will also examine epistemic interpretations of counterfactuals, such as those proposed by Ramsey and Ginsberg. Readings for the course will include works by Goodman, Adams, Lewis, Fine and Bennett, among others. (B)

This workshop is open only to PhD Philosophy graduate students planning to go on the job market in the fall of 2012. Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter. Pass/Fail.

Book Zeta of the Metaphysics, sometimes characterized as ‘the Mount Everest of ancient philosophy’, is concerned with the question, What is substantial being (ousia)? Aristotle explores several potential answers to this question, specifying substantial being as subject, essence, universal, or genus. His discussion is based on the distinction between form and matter of composite beings. Further questions discussed in Zeta include: Do non-substantial beings have an essence or definition? Why do definitions constitute a unity? What role do essences play in scientific explanations? The seminar will be a close reading of Zeta. (III) (IV)

Plotinus (205-270 AD) was the founder of Neoplatonism—a movement and mode of thought that pervaded Late Antiquity and set permanent marks on the philosophical tradition in Europe and among the Muslims. In this seminar we shall read two treatises of Plotinus, Ennead V.1, On the three principal hypostases and Ennead VI.8, On free will and the will of the One.

Modern political philosophy is an inquiry into the legitimacy of political authority (why should I be submitted to a Sovereign?). Social philosophy is an inquiry into the meaning of social action : what does it take for an agent to be acting socially? According to the French School of sociology (Durkheim, Mauss, Lévi-Strauss, Dumont), human beings are social beings insofar as their lifes are governed by collective representations and institutions. This view can be presented as a way of dealing with the paradoxes of a purely political view of social life as found in social contract theories of political sovereignty.First, we will assess Durkheim’s reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Social Contract as having anticipated the sociological understanding of social life by overcoming a purely atomistic view of political associations (with the concept of a “general will” and its foundation in the “moral” constitution of the people, i.e. its collective habits and social institutions).Then, we will consider contemporary proposals to locate the concept of institution within the framework of a philosophy of action (Anscombe, “On Brute Facts”; Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society).