PHIL

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)

In this seminar, we will examine the logical and metaphysical writings of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. We will begin by exploring the metaphysical underpinnings of Leibniz’s calculus of analytic containment, as developed in such essays as General Inquiries into the Analysis of Concepts and Truths (1686) and A Mathematics of Reason (1690). We then consider how Leibniz’s logic informs some of the metaphysical ideas developed in some of Leibniz’s less technical philosophical writings, including Discourse on Metaphysics (1686) and On the Ultimate Origination of Things (1697). These distinctive logico-metaphysical conceptions, which give a singular shape to Leibniz’s philosophy, reach their full maturity in his best known essay on metaphysics, the Monadology (1714), with which the seminar will conclude. (III)

An investigation into what philosophy and linguistics can teach us about LLMs and vice versa. (B)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)