PHIL

Philosophical conceptions of nature as developed by Kant and some of the major subsequent thinkers – Schelling and Hegel in particular – share three characteristics which make them alien to how philosophers nowadays tend to think about nature:

(1) According to Kant, Schelling and Hegel there is such a thing as a philosophy of nature properly speaking, i. e. a kind of philosophical engagement with nature that does not as such amount to philosophy of natural science. (2) Philosopical knowledge of nature cannot, however, be gained by directly taking nature as a topic. It can only be achieved subsequent to an investigation into the form of cognition as such. (3) While philosophical investigation can teach us something about nature that can only be known philosophically, philosophy of nature must nevertheless take natural science seriously, i. e. it must both clarify how empirical science of nature is possible and take precaution not to contradict anything that is known, empirically, about nature.

Against this background, we will deal with three main questions: We will first ask for how the transition from a broadly (epistemo-)logical investigation into the form of cognition to the philosophy of nature as it occurs in the works of Kant and Hegel is to be understood. We will then inquire into their conception of the proper method of a philosophy of nature by looking at how they introduce the very first categories of nature – space, time, matter, and motion. We will finally adress the question whether a philosophy of nature of the general type advocated by these thinkers might still be viable today, given the advance of natural science since the times in which they wrote.

This course is a study of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle's most widely read philosophical treatise on the best life for human beings. In it he offers enduringly relevant answers to question such as: What is happiness? How can studying ethics promote happiness? What is the relationship between being happy and being morally good? What features are characteristic of the morally good person? What role does friendship play in the happy life? What about goods like honor, health, pleasure, and money? To what extent do we have control over our actions, character, and happiness? What level of intellectual activity is required for happiness? To what extent can one engage in such activity without being morally good? (A) (IV)

Humans are said to be rational animals. What does rationality, understood as a capacity, consist in? And what is practical rationality, understood as a qualified way of thinking, feeling, and acting? – In this course we are going to consider a roughly Aristotelian framework for answering these and related questions. The place of reason in human nature is characterized by a complex teleology: its employment is both purpose and instrument. To make use of reason is, centrally, to infer, i.e. to think and act for reasons. The roles of reasons are various: they validate, justify, prompt and guide, explain … To act on a reason is, typically, to do something for the sake of some end. This is so, in particular, in the context of more or less technical reasoning. But the most basic and ultimate reasons, the ones by heeding which we act justly or unjustly and, more generally, well or badly, seem not to be of this form. How then do they enter the constitution of a good human life?

In this course we’ll investigate philosophical problems underlying contemporary political controversies about immigration. Together, we’ll discuss questions such as the following: What gives one group of people the right to forcibly exclude other people from coming to reside somewhere? Is there such a right at all? What moral authority do existing borders have? What role should the idea of “the nation” play in our thinking about immigration? Indeed, what exactly are nations? And is there a compelling case for the exclusion of immigrants that depends on a commitment to preserving a national culture? All of these questions touch on fundamental issues in political philosophy: the nature of citizenship and its relationship to culture, the source of legitimate authority, the justifiability of state coercion, the content and ground of human rights.

The Timaeus is one of Plato’s most influential dialogues, and it is also unusual in several respects. The bulk of the work is taken up with a single speech about the origin of the cosmos and the place of human beings within it. The dialogue contains the only discussion in the entire Platonic corpus of numerous topics, including the structure of elemental bodies and the mechanics of sense perception. It is also an important source for understanding Platonic moral psychology, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical methodology. In this course, we will study the dialogue closely, focusing on particular topics and sections of the dialogue each week. We will also aim of understand the structure and central argument of the dialogue as a whole. (IV)

The class will be devoted to the themes and lines of philosophical thought set forth in the instructor’s recent book ‘Thinking and Being’ (HUP, 2018). We shall work through the Parmendian puzzles concerning falsehood and negation in trying to find what are the bearers of truth and falsehood, and what is philosophical logic. Readings will include texts by Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Frege, Russell, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. 

Aristotle’s approach to ethics is sometimes termed intellectualist, meaning that it has no room for a notion of the will, understood as a principle of human action distinct from intellect or reason. Such a notion, it is said, gained currency only centuries later, at least partly through influences alien to Greek philosophy. St Augustine is often cited as one of the thinkers most responsible for the notion’s becoming prevalent. St Thomas Aquinas, however, presents a highly articulated theory of human action that appears to integrate a robust conception of the will, and one heavily indebted to Augustine, into a largely Aristotelian framework. We will read and discuss substantial passages from these three authors bearing on the question of the will, in the hope that seeing them side by side can help to get at what they really mean and what the philosophical merits of their views are. (A) (IV)

Topic: Austin in Context

Few works of 20th century philosophy have enjoyed as fruitful an afterlife as J.L. Austin’s How To Do Things With Words, which not only heralded in a new set of objects of scrutiny in the Philosophy of Language in the Anglo-American tradition, but also was taken up in that tradition’s many abroads – spawning debates in structuralist semantics on the continent, in social and political theory, in the methodological literature of the humanities, or in contemporary feminist philosophy and gender studies. In this class we shall (a) try to understand how key concepts such as ‘performative’, ‘illocutionary act’, or ‘felicity’ were coined in response to pressures arising from early 20th century philosophical debates about issues in epistemology and moral theory, and (b) try to track how the operating logic of such concepts changes when they are taking out of their native habitat and set to work in some of the radically different contexts mentioned above.

This is a workshop for 2nd year philosophy graduate students, in which students revise a piece of work to satisfy the PhD program requirements.

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.