PHIL

As “theoretical reasoning” is the philosopher’s term of art for reasoning about what is true, “practical reasoning” means to name reasoning about what to do. But on the standard conception of the contemporary philosophical literature, there is no real distinction to be drawn here. “Practical reasoning” is just a species of theoretical reasoning, directed to truths about what we are to do. In this seminar, we will explore an older tradition, beginning with Aristotle and running through Hegel and Anscombe, which seeks to make out a much more interesting thought: that practical reasoning takes us not merely to a judgment of the truth of what we are to do, but all the way to the doing itself. Since reasoning is thinking, this conception implies that there is a form of thinking that is also, and equally, acting. We will read a range of texts from both the historical and contemporary literature, with a view toward seeing how we may make good on this difficult idea. And we will consider in a preliminary way the potential bearing of artificial intelligence upon our question. (I)

Aquinas regards justice as the preeminent moral virtue, and in the Summa theologiae he devotes more Questions to it than to any other virtue (II-II, qq. 57-79). With occasional help from other passages of his, and with an eye to his sources (especially Aristotle) and to later thinkers, we will first work through his general accounts of the object of justice (ius—the just or the right), justice as a virtue, the nature of injustice, and the distinction between distributive and commutative justice. Then, as time permits, we will discuss selected texts on more specific topics such as judicature, restitution, partiality, murder, theft, verbal injuries, fraud, and usury. (A)

The third course will cover Marx’s “Paris Manuscripts” (aka “The 1844 Manuscripts,” aka “The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts”) and Marx’s historical writings about France, especially The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and his writings on the Paris Commune.

Do we have free will? What is free will anyway? Does it require an ability to do otherwise? Is free will compatible with a scientific conception of the world? Can people ever be justifiably blamed, praised, or punished for their actions, given all the ways we’re influenced by external forces? In this course on free will, we’ll look at some contemporary perspectives on these questions. The course will have three parts. First, we’ll look at reasons why we might not have free will. Next, we’ll consider how we could have free will. Finally, we’ll ask whether and for what it matters whether we have free will.   
Readings will come from Harry Frankfurt, Derk Pereboom, Kadri Vihvelin, P.F. and Galen Strawson, Susan Wolf, Rodrick Chisholm, Manuel Vargas, Thomas Nagel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir, among others.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political philosophy is based on an account of moral psychology, an account that is highly critical of the present—critical of current institutions and of its product, namely, our present moral psychology—while also, at moments, hopeful for the future. The seminar begins by presenting Rousseau’s political philosophy as a development of and a contrast to earlier social contract theories, in particular, to Thomas Hobbes’s view. We then examine both Rousseau’s and a few contemporaries’ moral psychologies to determine whether the political philosophy that Rousseau favors is feasible and/or desirable.

The purpose of this course is to explore the relationship between the project of human freedom—the project of liberation—and the idea of enlightenment. The main theme is a question: Is liberation simply a matter of enlightenment? That is, does freedom come from a special kind of profound knowledge? Affirmative answers to this question can be found in many places across the world and history, from Gautama the Buddha and the Stoic Epictetus to Francis Bacon and Immanuel Kant. Others have insisted that enlightenment, while part of liberation, is not reducible to it: liberation is a social, economic, and political process, facilitated by a kind of realization about one’s lack of freedom, but not reducible to it. This kind of thought is also ubiquitous: from Marcus Garvey and Frederick Douglass to Angela Davis and Catherine MacKinnon. Still others have been skeptical of enlightenment: most famously, Frankfurt school theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno.

At stake in this debate is a set of fundamental questions about the human condition and what one is to do with one’s life. Why, for example, are we supposedly unfree?  After all, many people—including many of you considering enrolling in this class—have relative freedom of bodily movement, the ability to choose when and where to eat your next meal, or whom to love. But all of these thinkers agree that we—all of us, from the college student to the political prisoner to the head of state—are unfree. Why? Understanding this striking claim will help us interrogate what it means to be a human being and what aspirations we may all be committed to simply by virtue of participating in a social order. Appreciating how different thinkers agree that we are all unfree, but disagree on why or what this amounts to, will also help us get into view their different ideas of what human freedom is, how it should be achieved, and therefore what should be done now. As such, we will have the opportunity to dissect and criticize the ideas, arguments, and values that are developed in favor of one position rather than another. By the end of the course, students should be able to articulate some ideas, arguments, and values of their own with regard to liberation and enlightenment. (A)

An examination of ancient Greek philosophical texts that are foundational for Western philosophy, especially the work of Plato and Aristotle. Topics will include: the nature and possibility of knowledge and its role in human life; the nature of the soul; virtue; happiness and the human good.

What is the relationship between physical processes in the brain and body and the processes of thought and consciousness that constitute our mental life? Philosophers and others have puzzled over this question for millennia. Many have concluded it to be intractable. In recent decades, the field of cognitive science--encompassing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and other disciplines--has proposed a new form of answer. The driving idea is that the interaction of the mental and the physical may be understood via a third level of analysis: that of the computational. This course offers a critical introduction to the elements of this approach, and surveys some of the alternative models and theories that fall within it. Readings are drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. (B) (II)

Philosophers engaged in what we call “critical theory” have traditionally been committed to one or another version of the thought that theory can be emancipatory. Over the last decades – arguably centuries – this commitment to a critical theory has developed into a lively philosophical tradition with a series of core texts at its foundation. In this course, we will carefully read through the most influential works within this tradition, focusing especially on what has become known as the Frankfurt School and its origins. Our readings will include works by Hegel, Freud, Fanon, Marx, Lukács, Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse, among others. Overarching themes of our discussion will be the relations between knowledge and emancipation, theory and practice. (A)

This course provides an introduction to Spinoza’s philosophy and his relation to German thought, both prior to and within German idealism. In addition to carefully reading Spinoza’s own writings, we will consider rationalist alternatives to Spinoza’s metaphysics, the Pantheism controversy, and the acosmism charge. Beyond Spinoza, authors to be read include Leibniz, Moses Mendelssohn, and Hegel.