PHIL

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.

The course will take up a number of themes that are central to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus as they arise in the history of philosophical thought about logic— themes that arise out of questions such as the following: What is the status of the basic law(s) of logic?; Is it possible to draw a limit to logical thought?, What is the status of the reflecting subject of logical inquiry?; What is the relation between the logical and the psychological?; What, if anything ,is the relation between the following two inquiries into forms of unity: “What is the unity of the judgment (or the proposition)?" and “What is the unity of the judging subject?”; What (if any) sort of distinction between form and matter is relevant to logic?; How should one understand the formality of logic?; How, and how deeply, does language matter to logic? Topics will include various aspects of Aristotle's logical theory and metaphysics, Descartes’s Doctrine of the Creation of Eternal Truth, Kant on Pure General and Transcendental Logic, Frege on the nature of a proper Begriffsschrift and what it takes to understand what that it is, and early Wittgenstein’s inheritance and treatment of all of the above. Secondary readings will be from Jan Lukasiewicz, John MacFarlane, Clinton Tolley, Sebastian Roedl, Matt Boyle, John McDowell, Elizabeth Anscombe, Cora Diamond, Peter Geach, Matthias Haase, Thomas Ricketts, and Peter Sullivan. (III or V)

This advanced undergraduate course will examine the notion of human dignity, with a special eye towards its role in contemporary human rights discourse. The course begins by tracing the historical development of the idea of human dignity both in philosophy and in law, and from there it moves on to examine contemporary usages. Questions to be examined include the following: What is the meaning of "human dignity"? Is it basic to morality? What is the relationship between human dignity and human rights? Does respect for human dignity require the abolition of capital punishment and/or the permission of assisted suicide, among other practices? Is it an inherently religious idea? What grounding might it have in secular ethics? 

It is no secret that human beings frequently disagree on matters both large and small. Our neighbors hold religious beliefs that we do not. They disagree with us on scientific matters, such as the reality of climate change. They have different life priorities. And they have moral intuitions that often differ strikingly from our own. At the level of whole communities, these differences seem to grow even starker. The highly visible ideological conflicts between the nations of Western Europe and North America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia on matters of religious freedom, freedom of expression, democracy, gender equality, gay rights, and the rights of children serve as a constant reminder of this. This is the reality in which defenders and practitioners of human rights have to operate. And it is therefore important to think about how these disagreements and differences should impact both our understanding and implementation of human rights, if at all. That is the aim of this course.

We will begin by trying to explicate the manner in which science is a rational response to observational facts. This will involve a discussion of inductivism, Popper’s deductivism, Lakatos and Kuhn.  After this, we will briefly survey some other important topics in the philosophy of science, including underdetermination, theories of evidence, Bayesianism, the problem of induction, explanation, and laws of nature. (B) (II)

The aim of this course will be to introduce to one of the most important and discussed work pertaining to the continental field of the Philosophy of the XXth Century: Heidegger's Being and Time. Our course will be structured by two main movements. On the one hand we will introduce to the main and fundamental concepts developed by Heidegger in his work through analytic sessions devoted to the most important sections of Sein und Zeit. On the other hand, we will follow the way Sein und Zeit was received and discussed in the field of French Contemporary Continental Philosophy - especially through Derrida's and Levinas's interpretations and discussions of Sein und Zeit. The double structure of our itinerary obeys to a philosophical necessity which will take the form of a leading question: is it possible to think beyond the primacy of the horizon of Being - drawn by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit - anything like an "Otherwise than Being"? And if so, we will have to elucidate why and in what sense such an alternative horizon of sense does not entails the abandonment of the Heideggerian Question of Being, but leads, on the contrary, to the full explanation of the background without which the Question of Being raised by Sein und Zeit becomes unintelligible.

Two of Cicero’s most enduring works are De Amicitia (On Friendship) and De Senectute (On Old Age).  We will read the entirety of both works in Latin and study their relationship to Cicero’s thought and life.  Other readings in translation will include related works of Cicero and quite a few of his letters to Atticus and other friends.  The first hour of each course meeting will be devoted to translation, the rest to discussion, in order to give opportunities for auditors who are reading in translation. The requirements include a midterm, a final exam, and a paper. Anyone from anywhere in the university may register if you meet the prerequisite.

One can distinguish four ways in which science and aesthetics are related during the last two centuries. First, science has been the subject of artistic effort, in painting and photography and in poetry and novels (e.g., in Goethe’s poetry or in H. G. Wells’s Island of Doctor Moreau). Second, science has been used to explain aesthetic effects (e.g., Helmholtz’s work on the way painters achieve visual effects or musicians achieve tonal effects). Third, aesthetic means have been used to convey scientific conceptions (e.g., through illustrations in scientific volumes or through aesthetically affective and effective writing). Finally philosophers have stepped back to consider the relationship between scientific knowing and aesthetic comprehension (e.g., Kant and Bas van Fraassen). In this course, we will consider these four modes of relationship. The first part of the quarter will be devoted to Kant, reading carefully his third critique; then we will turn to Goethe and Helmholtz, both feeling the impact of Kant, and to Wells, a student of T. H. Huxley. We then consider more contemporary modes expressive of the relationship, especially the role of illustrations in science and the work of contemporary philosophers like Fraassen. (B) (I) (II)

This course will focus on authors from the Jewish tradition, although some attention will be given to Catholic and Protestant perspectives, as found, for example, in liberation theology and in certain forms of religious existentialism. We will look at the various ways in which contemporary philosophers of Judaism have dealt with suffering, evil and God, especially after the experience of the Shoah. We will examine the often repeated claim that Judaism has approached the philosophical and religious challenges of suffering more through an ethics of suffering than on the basis of a metaphysics of suffering. After an introductory discussion of Maimonides on the Book of Job, readings for the course may come from authors such as E. Lévinas, J.B. Soloveitchik, Y. Leibowitz, H. Jonas, A. Lichtenstein, D.W. Halivni, D. Shatz, and E. Berkovits. The course will culminate in a philosophical analysis of some of the most important writings of Primo Levi.

This class will be a close reading of Plato’s Phaedo, which is a dialogue about what it means to die, and what kinds of things escape death. In addition to interesting ourselves in the –dramatic and philosophical—structure of the dialogue as a whole, we will carefully examine each of Socrates’ arguments for the immortality of the soul. We will also read some contemporary philosophical literature both on the Phaedo itself, and on the problem of the afterlife. (IV)