PHIL

Most of us seek to be reasonably good people leading what we take to be successful and satisfying lives. There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that most of us fail to live up to our own standards. Worse, we often fail to mark our own failures in ways that could help us improve ourselves. The context in which we try to live good lives is shaped by the vicissitudes of the global economy. The global economy is obviously of interest to those of us studying economics or planning on careers in business. Aspiring entrepreneurs or corporate leaders have clear stakes in understanding practical wisdom in the economic sphere. But anyone who relies upon her pay - or someone else's - to cover her living expenses has some interest in economic life.

In this course, we will bring work in neo-Aristotelian ethics and neo-classical economics into conversation with empirical work from behavioral economics and behavioral ethics, to read, write, talk, and think about cultivating wisdom in our economic dealings. While our focus will be on business, the kinds of problems we will consider, and the ways of addressing these, occur in ordinary life more generally - at home, in academic settings, and in our efforts to participate in the daily production and reproduction of sound modes of social interaction. (A)

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. (A) (I)

This seminar will focus on three authors––Charlotte Delbo, Primo Levi, and Zalman Gradowski––each of whom wrote a literary masterpiece about their experiences in Auschwitz. All of their works also raise profound philosophical questions. Delbo, a member of the French Resistance, was deported to Auschwitz and wrote a truly remarkable trilogy, Auschwitz and After, that makes use of a variety of literary genres. Levi, deported as a Jew, wrote two classic prose works, If This is a Man and The Drowned and the Saved. Gradowski, the least well known of these authors, was assigned to the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. Before being murdered, he wrote two extraordinary manuscripts and buried them under the ashes of Birkenau, where they were discovered after the war. Delbo and Levi both exist in English translation. However, there is not yet a complete translation of Gradowski into English. (His manuscripts were written in Yiddish). We will read the superb French translation of his manuscripts, which is accompanied by an important critical apparatus. Reading knowledge of French is therefore a prerequisite for this course.

A central concern of this seminar will be the relation between literary expression and philosophical insight. We will also take up the question of how the Shoah can be represented and what philosophy can say about it. Finally, we will consider writing as a form of ethical and political resistance. We will read these works from several perspectives––philosophical and theological, literary, and historical.

We will examine the question of what it means to read religious texts and practices from a philosophical point of view.

This course centers on a close reading of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, with some attention to his writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. How should a history of sexuality take into account scientific theories, social relations of power, and different experiences of the self? We discuss the contrasting descriptions and conceptions of sexual behavior before and after the emergence of a science of sexuality. Other writers influenced by and critical of Foucault are also discussed.

Thomas Aquinas’s account of the goodness and badness that are proper to human actions—moral goodness and badness—is fundamental for his entire ethical teaching. It provides the rationale for his way of dividing human actions into kinds; it sets the reference points for his theory of virtues and vices, which he takes to be nothing other than principles of good and bad actions; it explains the moral function that he ascribes to law; and so on. The aim of this course will be to understand and think about that account. Its fullest presentation is found in Aquinas’s masterpiece, the Summa theologiae. However, the Summa’s approach to ethics is heavily metaphysical, and nowhere is this more true than in its treatment of moral goodness and badness. We shall therefore need to consult background passages from other parts of that work and other works of his, on such metaphysical topics as good and bad in general, powers and their objects, the nature of circumstances, and the relation between intellect and will. We shall also want to consider to what extent the account depends on strictly theological notions. (IV)   

It has been said that one’s emotions bespeak one’s character even more truly than one’s actions do. At the same time there is a long tradition of opposing the emotions to reason, and some ethical conceptions, e.g. Stoicism and Buddhism, suspect them of undermining virtue. Such positions are not without foundation. Doesn’t fear prevent you from pursuing an excellent project? Do not greed and envy stand in the way of justice and charity? Does not pride prevent veracity and deprive you of friends? Nevertheless, those pessimistic views fail to do justice, first, to the importance of emotions in human life, second to the role of reason in their constitution and, third, to their indispensable contribution to a life of virtue. – In the first half of the course we are going to investigate how reason is at work in typical emotions, providing the soul with patterns of inclination that take it (inferentially, as it were) from kinds of occasion and their ostensible significance to kinds of inward and outward response. We’ll also see that the apparent involuntariness of emotions does not in fact remove them from our accountability. Nevertheless, being “passions”, they expose us to the impact of our surroundings. What is the significance of the resulting “passivity”? – This question takes us to the second half of the course: an exploration of the relevance of our emotionality to a good life. Emotions enhance motivation: acts of loyalty or charity, for instance, find support in affection and sympathy. Likewise, admittedly, acts of cruelty are helped by hatred! Emotionality is indeed ambivalent. But, if all goes well, our feelings support the practice of virtue, and thwart its obstruction. Moreover readiness to emotional responses goes with alertness to occasions and opportunities – again for better or worse. One’s readiness to appropriate feelings of gratitude makes one notice undeserved support and the need to acknowledge it; the compassionate person is aware of distress that he / she may be able to alleviate. Similarly, of course, the resentful person is good at perceiving affront and injury (even where there are none!). Still, it may be doubted that morality would have a grip on human living even to the moderate extent to which it does shape people’s conduct, if practical reason were not assisted in its task by a well-formed emotionality – where “well” means both in accordance with virtue or right reason and to a sufficient extent. Does all this mean the value of “virtuous feelings” is essentially instrumental? (A)

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.

Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter.

(I) (V)