PHIL 29300 Senior Tutorial
Topic: Ideological Critique: Marx, Nietzsche, and the Frankfurt School (instructor: J. Edwards)
The term ideology is often used synonymously with ‘ethos’ or ‘world view.’ However, in philosophy it is generally used more narrowly as a pejorative term that identifies false or unwarranted beliefs, which serve the interests of some dominant group, and which are generally contrary to the interests of those who hold them. An ideological critique typically attempts to expose ideological beliefs and to explain how they can exist at all—why anybody would ever come to hold such beliefs and what could sustain their being held.In this course, we will examine several of the most important ideological critiques: Marx's claim that religion, ethics, and legal systems are “ideological humbug” that arise from and sustain relations of production; Nietzsche's claim that contemporary morality is life-denying and that it originates in a trick played on the strong by the weak some 2000 years ago; and the Frankfurt School's claim that fascism, state capitalism, and mass culture are all forms of social domination enabled by a means-ends rationality that emerged out of the Enlightenment.While each of these accounts is of independent interest, in this course they will also serve as case studies of the method of ideological critique more generally. In each instance we will be concerned with the following questions: What exactly is an ideological belief? Is there ever anything besides deliberate deception that could explain someone holding such a belief? Are there actually such things as real interests such that we could hold beliefs that are contrary to them? Can someone hold a single ideological belief, or are these beliefs the sort of things that only come in large packages? If we suspect that vast constellations of our beliefs might be ideological, is there any sure method of sorting out which ones are and which ones are not, or might our whole way of approaching these issues itself be hopelessly tangled in ideological thinking?
Topic: Reason, Desire, and the Good (instructor: M. Hopwood)
If I show no regard for the feelings of others, you might describe me as callous or cruel, but would it also make sense to describe me as irrational? Some philosophers have denied this, claiming that I only have reason to do whatever serves my existing motivations. If I have no desire to act morally, then I have no reason to do so either. Other philosophers have argued that a person who ignores moral considerations is guilty of a kind of rational defect; such a person is failing to see the importance of something that any fully rational agent would recognize. In this class, we will use this debate as an entry point into some of the most important and influential work in contemporary moral philosophy. We will look at Bernard Williams's attempt to pull morality and rationality apart, and the attempts of Aristotelians (Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Warren Quinn) and Kantians (Christine Korsgaard) to put them back together again. In the final section of the class, we will consider a very different perspective on the debate by taking up Iris Murdoch's claim that the failure to show due regard for others is not so much a failure of reason as a failure of love.
Meets with Jr/Sr section. Open only to intensive-track majors. No more than two tutorials may be used to meet program requirements.