PHIL

In this class we will investigate what it is for a society to be just. In what sense are the members of a just society equal? What freedoms does a just society protect? Must a just society be a democracy? What economic arrangements are compatible with justice? In the second portion of the class we will consider one pressing injustice in our society in light of our previous philosophical conclusions. Possible candidates include, but are not limited to, racial inequality, economic inequality, and gender hierarchy. Here our goal will be to combine our philosophical theories with empirical evidence in order to identify, diagnose, and effectively respond to actual injustice. (A)

This course is devoted to one of the most important philosophical books of the continental tradition, Levinas's Totality and Infinity. We will propose a systematic reading of Levinas's masterpiece in order to show the main aspects of Levinas's philosophical elaboration. The first aspect of our course will be to insist on the way Levinas takes position in the field of German and French phenomenology, in what consists exactly his technical and systematic critique of Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre's conceptualities. We will, for that reason, propose to make Totality and Infinity in resonance with the most important sections of Husserl's Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and a Philosophical Phenomenology, Heidegger's Being and Time and Sartre's Being and Nothingness. This preliminary step will give us the conceptual means required in order to understand the exact philosophical position of Levinas towards the concept of society - that Levinas inherits directly from the French Sociological tradition (Durkheim in particular). Once such a background clarified it will become possible to understand Levinas's own elaboration towards the notion of society and for what reason the social experience coincides for him with a metaphysical experience - in other words in what sense Levinas can claim that the social relationship articulates what Descartes called the Idea of the Infinite. Such a second step will lead us to a last step which constitutes the ultimate demonstrative goal of our course: we will indeed try to show the necessity to overcome with Levinas the universalization of the notion of phenomenon coming from Husserl and Heidegger, to propose, in other words, a deflationist understanding of the notion of phenomenon. Such a deflationist understanding does not imply nevertheless the abandonment of the notion of phenomenon. On the contrary the metaphysics of society that we will propose, will lead us to think society as the fundamental presupposition from which the notion of phenomena coming from the Phenomenological tradition can find its logical meaning. What will be at stake is nothing else than the possibility of thinking anew the notion of Metaphysics in order to overcome the so-called "end of Metaphysics" proclaimed by Heidegger and Derrida.

I am, as a rule, able to say what I am thinking, intending, feeling, or doing without seeming to base what I say on observations of my own behavior. Both Ludwig Wittgenstein and (his student) Elizabeth Anscombe were deeply interested in this sort of non-observational self-awareness. In this course, we’ll be comparing and contrasting what Wittgenstein has to say about psychological self-ascription in his late writings with what Anscombe says about our knowledge of our own actions in Intention. (B)

You and I might identify as all sorts of things: as an American, a woman, a teacher, a student, a hip hop enthusiast, a vegetarian, a knitter, a computer nerd, a chef, a caucasian, a runner, a news junkie, a bleeding heart liberal, a member of the tea party, a football fan, and so on. Call everything on that list a practical identity. Some practical identities are optional—we can choose or whether or not to adopt them—while others, such as gender, are such that the law requires us to adopt them. But in each of these cases, there is a question as to whether the relevant practical identity has a prescriptive or a descriptive flavor. When I tell you I’m a vegetarian, am I describing the way I am, or laying down a plan for how I’d like to be? Are vegetarians a special kind of person all of whom share a special, deep, common core, or are they just the set of people who happen to follow the convention of not eating meat? Does the way we talk about vegetarianism affect what it means to be a vegetarian—what vegetarians are or could be? This quarter, we will approach these questions through the specific case of gender identity. You might think it’s straightforward to say what it means to be a man: you’re a man just in case you have a Y chromosome, and a woman just in case you have two X chromosomes. But what about an intersex baby who is arbitrarily assigned a gender at birth? Or someone with Klinefelter syndrome, who according to the above definition would be both a man and a woman? What about someone who was born biologically female, underwent sex reassignment surgery as an adult, and now identifies as a man? What about someone who prefers not to adopt any gender identity? There is often a temptation to dismiss these examples as aberrant borderline cases. But the past few decades have seen an explosion of new gender categories, many of which may very well take center stage in our culture sooner than we think. If we decide to write them off, we need to tell some story about how our gender concepts license us to do so. If not, then we are faced with the interesting challenge of explaining what gender now is, in light of these developments.

A survey of the thought of some of the most important figures of this period, including Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.

This course will critically survey the various ways in which philosophy curricula are developed and used in different educational contexts and for different age groups.  Considerable attention will be devoted to the growing movement in the U.S. for public educational programs in precollegiate philosophy.

Topic: Bodily Self-Knowledge (instructor: K. Howe)

Though few philosophers today are moved to defend anything like the mind-body dualism championed by Descartes in the Meditations, it remains an open question how instead we should characterize the relation in which we stand to our bodies. Though, in a sense, there is nothing to us over and above our bodies, still, we'd like to say, there is more to us than can be understood in terms of our bodies' physical and physiological properties. We are feeling, thinking, self-conscious beings, and, much of the time, this can seem to have little to do with our being bodily beings. There are, of course, significant moments where our mental and bodily lives meet—in, for example, perception and intentional action.It is through our bodies that we are made aware of the surrounding world and can intervene in it. But there is more than one way to think about what goes on when we perceive or act. One could conceive of it as being a way in which we make use of our bodies. This would make our bodies analogous to tools by which we gain knowledge and achieve our ends. But one could also think of perceiving and acting as moments where we, as feeling, thinking beings, are our bodies, where our mental and bodily lives are one and the same. Should we, then, think of ourselves as having bodies or as being bodies? In this course, we will approach this question through consideration of the notion of selfknowledge. Each of us stands in a special relation to our mental states and goings-on—to our beliefs, intentions, pains, etc.—in that we can usually just say what it is we're thinking or feeling. We needn't observe or make inferences from our behaviour as others must to know these things about us. Our knowledge of such states and goings-on, one could say, is thus knowledge we have as subject, as the one who is thinking, intending, or feeling. It is knowledge that we have of ourselves from the firstperson standpoint. Now, something which at least seems similar can be said for some of our bodily states. We can, for instance, usually just say where and how our limbs positioned, e.g. left arm raised above the head, bent at the elbow. We needn't look at ourselves to know this. Is this a form of selfknowledge related to the knowledge we have of our beliefs and our pains? Or is it a special form of perceptual knowledge—knowledge, that is, that happens to be of our bodies but could in principle be of bodies other than our own? To think through these issues, we will first consider a number of different approaches to self-knowledge more broadly. Then, we will consider the various positions recent authors have taken in connection with the body, especially as it figures in perception and action. Reflection on these issues should help us see whether and to what extent we should identify with our bodies. 

Topic: Hegel on Agency (instructor: B. Pierce) Hegel holds that human agency is both an individual and a social phenomenon: that the relation between subject and world that we call an action is possible only if it is also, in some sense, a relation between subjects. In this course, we will try to understand this difficult but intriguing (and highly influential) claim by reconstructing Hegel’s central arguments for it in his Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right. The first part of the course will be devoted to a close reading of the Reason chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. We will try to reconstruct the answer Hegel provides there to the question: what is it for some worldly happenings to count as my action? Since Hegel thinks seeing the answer to this question involves coming to see what it is for an agent to be unified both with herself and with other agents, during the second part of the course we will try to reconstruct Hegel’s view of intra- and intersubjective unity. This will involve understanding Hegel’s (in)famous distinction between morality and ethical life, for which our central texts will be drawn from the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right. The class will conclude by considering the relevance of the Hegelian position we have reconstructed for contemporary ethics.

Topic: Form and Matter in Kant’s Practical Philosophy (instructor: J. Tizzard) Kant famously claims that the moral worth of an action lies in its being motivated by the thought of duty instead of happiness or self-interest. In contrast to other ethical positions, his view is grounded on the thought that the most important feature of an action is not how the agent or anyone else stands to benefit from it, but the reason or principle that serves as the basis for its being chosen. With the articulation of the centerpiece of his view, the categorical imperative, Kant declares further that such principles are to be evaluated on the basis of their rational "form" and not their sensible “matter." The purpose of this course will be to better understand the meaning of and relationship between these concepts—form and matter—as they are used in the major works of Kant's Practical Philosophy, with a view to bringing out the very core of his position. Cultivating this understanding will involve touching upon a series of interrelated topics, including 1), Kant's understanding of the human subject as rational but sensibly dependent, and so as a subject whose practical thinking necessarily involves both form and matter; 2) the supreme principle of pure practical reason, more famously known as the Categorical Imperative, which is expressive of the form of practical reason; 3) the Highest Good, what Kant calls "happiness in proportion to virtue", which is expressive of the matter or object of practical reason; and 4) the nature of the unity of form and matter, the understanding of which requires that we examine how our rational and sensible capacities interact and condition one another in the practical context.This course will presuppose no prior knowledge of Kant’s philosophical system. It should be of use to both sympathizers and critics of Kant, as the main issues to be addressed relate directly to the standard objections brought against his view.Readings will be drawn from across Kant's major practical works. The majority of our time will be spent discussing the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), and the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), but texts such as the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), and Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) will also be consulted.

Topic: Bodily Self-Knowledge (instructor: K. Howe)

Though few philosophers today are moved to defend anything like the mind-body dualism championed by Descartes in the Meditations, it remains an open question how instead we should characterize the relation in which we stand to our bodies. Though, in a sense, there is nothing to us over and above our bodies, still, we'd like to say, there is more to us than can be understood in terms of our bodies' physical and physiological properties. We are feeling, thinking, self-conscious beings, and, much of the time, this can seem to have little to do with our being bodily beings. There are, of course, significant moments where our mental and bodily lives meet—in, for example, perception and intentional action.It is through our bodies that we are made aware of the surrounding world and can intervene in it. But there is more than one way to think about what goes on when we perceive or act. One could conceive of it as being a way in which we make use of our bodies. This would make our bodies analogous to tools by which we gain knowledge and achieve our ends. But one could also think of perceiving and acting as moments where we, as feeling, thinking beings, are our bodies, where our mental and bodily lives are one and the same. Should we, then, think of ourselves as having bodies or as being bodies? In this course, we will approach this question through consideration of the notion of selfknowledge. Each of us stands in a special relation to our mental states and goings-on—to our beliefs, intentions, pains, etc.—in that we can usually just say what it is we're thinking or feeling. We needn't observe or make inferences from our behaviour as others must to know these things about us. Our knowledge of such states and goings-on, one could say, is thus knowledge we have as subject, as the one who is thinking, intending, or feeling. It is knowledge that we have of ourselves from the firstperson standpoint. Now, something which at least seems similar can be said for some of our bodily states. We can, for instance, usually just say where and how our limbs positioned, e.g. left arm raised above the head, bent at the elbow. We needn't look at ourselves to know this. Is this a form of selfknowledge related to the knowledge we have of our beliefs and our pains? Or is it a special form of perceptual knowledge—knowledge, that is, that happens to be of our bodies but could in principle be of bodies other than our own? To think through these issues, we will first consider a number of different approaches to self-knowledge more broadly. Then, we will consider the various positions recent authors have taken in connection with the body, especially as it figures in perception and action. Reflection on these issues should help us see whether and to what extent we should identify with our bodies. 

Topic: Hegel on Agency (instructor: B. Pierce) Hegel holds that human agency is both an individual and a social phenomenon: that the relation between subject and world that we call an action is possible only if it is also, in some sense, a relation between subjects. In this course, we will try to understand this difficult but intriguing (and highly influential) claim by reconstructing Hegel’s central arguments for it in his Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right. The first part of the course will be devoted to a close reading of the Reason chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. We will try to reconstruct the answer Hegel provides there to the question: what is it for some worldly happenings to count as my action? Since Hegel thinks seeing the answer to this question involves coming to see what it is for an agent to be unified both with herself and with other agents, during the second part of the course we will try to reconstruct Hegel’s view of intra- and intersubjective unity. This will involve understanding Hegel’s (in)famous distinction between morality and ethical life, for which our central texts will be drawn from the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right. The class will conclude by considering the relevance of the Hegelian position we have reconstructed for contemporary ethics.

Topic: Form and Matter in Kant’s Practical Philosophy (instructor: J. Tizzard) Kant famously claims that the moral worth of an action lies in its being motivated by the thought of duty instead of happiness or self-interest. In contrast to other ethical positions, his view is grounded on the thought that the most important feature of an action is not how the agent or anyone else stands to benefit from it, but the reason or principle that serves as the basis for its being chosen. With the articulation of the centerpiece of his view, the categorical imperative, Kant declares further that such principles are to be evaluated on the basis of their rational "form" and not their sensible “matter." The purpose of this course will be to better understand the meaning of and relationship between these concepts—form and matter—as they are used in the major works of Kant's Practical Philosophy, with a view to bringing out the very core of his position. Cultivating this understanding will involve touching upon a series of interrelated topics, including 1), Kant's understanding of the human subject as rational but sensibly dependent, and so as a subject whose practical thinking necessarily involves both form and matter; 2) the supreme principle of pure practical reason, more famously known as the Categorical Imperative, which is expressive of the form of practical reason; 3) the Highest Good, what Kant calls "happiness in proportion to virtue", which is expressive of the matter or object of practical reason; and 4) the nature of the unity of form and matter, the understanding of which requires that we examine how our rational and sensible capacities interact and condition one another in the practical context.This course will presuppose no prior knowledge of Kant’s philosophical system. It should be of use to both sympathizers and critics of Kant, as the main issues to be addressed relate directly to the standard objections brought against his view.Readings will be drawn from across Kant's major practical works. The majority of our time will be spent discussing the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), and the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), but texts such as the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), and Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) will also be consulted.

Students are required to submit the college reading & research course form.

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.