PHIL

Topic: Kant on Causation

The concept of causation is fundamental to the world and our cognition of it, Kant claims. Saying that experience itself would not be possible without that concept, Kant rejects Hume's claim that causation is not warranted by experience. That is to say, Kant argues that the concept of causation is constitutive to our mind in experiencing the world. However, having defended the concept of causality to be fundamental to world and mind, Kant faces the problem of determinism. This problem can be put in the following way: if everything that happens has a cause in nature from which it follows with necessity, then everything that happens is caused by that cause in nature and cannot be caused by an act of the mind like a decision. Moreover, it may seem that everything that will happen is already determined to happen in a certain way. Kant addresses this problem by showing that it rests on a misunderstanding about causation–namely, that the fundamentality of natural causation does not actually entail that everything that will happen is already determined. Seeing this furthermore makes available the position that there being a cause in nature to everything that happens does not exclude there being a different form of causation like in decisions.

In this seminar we will engage in a close reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason centered around the concept of causation. In the first part, we will retrace Kant's argument for the fundamentality of causation to the world and our mind. To that end, we will read the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason and select parts from the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental analytic. In the second part of the seminar, we will engage with the issue of determinism as treated by Kant in the antinomies of reason. Centering the discussion around the concept of causation allows for a substantial engagement with a centerpiece of Kant's philosophy that is doable in one quarter.

Topic: Hegel's Science of Logic

Hegel's Science Of Logic is a philosophical work of rare ambition. A presuppositionless exposition of the  basic categories of thought, the text at once provides a critique of the concepts foundational to philosophical thought before Hegel, as well as the principles for the philosophical cognition of the realm of nature as well as the sphere of human freedom. In this class we will focus on the third part of Hegel's Logic in order to understand Hegel's sustained account of the nature of concepts, judgment, inference, objecthood and causation. At the same time we will try to formulate answers to the exegetical and philosophical questions that have been prominent in Hegel scholarship: What does it mean for this text to both be a work of logic as well as one of metaphysics? What do we make of Hegel's insights in light of developments in formal logic and the natural sciences since Hegel's time?

Topic: Define ‘definition’: Socratic definition and its subject-matter

Socratic philosophy consists in defining things like “courage,” “virtue,” and “love.” We will ask about this practice in general; what is Socrates doing when he asks people ‘what is’ questions? What is the subject-matter of his questioning? How do he and his interlocutors pursue their common goal? We will focus first on the “what is” question as it appears in the early dialogues. Socrates asks his questions, which he insists are prior to his interlocutors' concerns, with great urgency. But why should Socrates’ questions override other questions? Is socratic questioning about “courage,” “virtue” or “justice” prior to other questions we ask or simply different? Modern readers of Plato often accuse Socratic philosophy of moving indiscriminately between questions about terms in ordinary language, what a word signifies, and the real essence of what is so signified, the object of scientific study. Has Socrates failed to distinguish between what is prior for us and what is prior by nature? In the second part of the course we will continue to ask about definition and its object by reading parts of dialogues from the middle and later period. Our focus in this part of the course will be on the method of collection and division as a way of defining things. We will focus on the unity of definition, its relationship to forms, and the difference between scientific taxonomy and the philosophical need to comprehend the unity of beings by defining.

In this class we will explore questions of justice that arise in and around work. We will consider concepts such as exploitation and domination as they apply to workers under capitalism. We will explore the foundation of the right to strike, and the right to form a union. We will consider the merits of different justifications for workplace democracy and worker control. We will explore the role of domestic injustice in sustaining wage inequality for women, and consider the relationship of race to capitalism. We explore these topics through a variety of normative lenses, drawing on cutting edge work in the liberal, neo-republican, Marxist, feminist, and human rights traditions. (A)

Anxiety is discussed in modern philosophy as a mood which by contrast to fear is not directed to an object and thus reveals the "nothing" which dominates our engagement with beings. The class will be devoted to the modern philosophical discourse on "anxiety" and "nothing."

Among the texts that we shall study are: Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety, Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, and Sartre's Being and Nothingness. We shall also compare the philosophical concern with anxiety/nothing with the discussion of anxiety in psychoanalysis, especially in Lacan's Seminar Anxiety, (i.e., Seminar 10).

The course is devoted to the unity and the disunity in the evolution of Wittgenstein's philosophy. We shall question the prevalent view that the later work radically breaks with the earlier. In accord with Wittgenstein's own advice we shall study the Philosophical Investigations in light of the Tractatus, and the Tractatus from the perspective of the Philosophical Investigations. We shall also look at some of Wittgenstein's writing from the thirties (e.g., The Big Typescript).

Is opera an archaic and exotic pageant for fanciers of overweight canaries, or a relevant art form of great subtlety and complexity that has the power to be revelatory? In this course of eight sessions, jointly taught by Professor Martha Nussbaum and Anthony Freud, General Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, we explore the multi-disciplinary nature of this elusive and much-maligned art form, with its four hundred-year-old European roots, discussing both historic and philosophical contexts and the practicalities of interpretation and production in a very un-European, twenty-first century city.

Anchoring each session around a different opera, we will be joined by a variety of guest experts, one each week, including a director, a conductor, a designer and two singers, to enable us to explore different perspectives.

The list of operas to be discussed include Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Verdi's Don Carlos, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Strauss's Elektra, and Britten's Billy Budd. (A) (I)

Human rights are claims of justice that hold merely in virtue of our shared humanity. In this course we will explore philosophical theories of this elementary and crucial form of justice. Among topics to be considered are the role that dignity and humanity play in grounding such rights, their relation to political and economic institutions, and the distinction between duties of justice and claims of charity or humanitarian aid. Finally we will consider the application of such theories to concrete, problematic and pressing problems, such as global poverty, torture and genocide. (A) (I)

This seminar will consist in a close reading of Aristotle’s great contribution to philosophical psychology, his De Anima, which we will read in conjunction with Sean Kelsey’s much-anticipated manuscript on the subject.  Themes will include the relation between mind and world, the natures of perception and thought, the distinctions between different kinds of minds, the definition of "life."  The seminar will take the form of a reading group, in which various graduate students and faculty members will participate.  Students taking the course for credit will be expected to submit a term paper.  Hours to be arranged. (IV)

 

This class will focus on a close reading of Darwin's two classic texts. An initial class or two will explore the state of biology prior to Darwin's Beagle voyage, and then consider the development of his theories before 1859. Then we will turn to his two books. Among the topics of central concern will be the logical, epistemological, and rhetorical status of Darwin's several theories, especially his evolutionary ethics; the religious foundations of his ideas and the religious reaction to them; and the social-political consequences of his accomplishment. The year 2019 was the 210th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 160th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. (B) (II)