PHIL

In this class, we will explore the idea that political philosophy is practical. We will address questions such as the following. What is the best interpretation of this idea? How might we defend it against skepticism? What consequences does it have for method? What is it for a political philosophy to be utopian? Is there a good and a bad way of being utopian? How are these to be distinguished? What is it for a political philosophy to be cynical? Does “human nature” place constraints on our political theorizing? What ought we to mean by “human nature” in this context? How do concepts like scarcity and abundance relate to utopian enterprise? (I)

When political power is exercised, what makes it legitimate? Political theorists have long wondered how to justify political rule, which in general is any system whereby certain people get to make decisions on behalf of others and direct them to comply with the decisions, often ensuring their compliance through the threat or use of force. What justification can be provided for the normative standing of such systems of rule? The question of legitimacy is distinct from whether political rule is just or whether it is lawful (exercised according to a constitutional order), although those questions are not entirely separable. In this seminar, we will examine the possible grounds on which we might begin to establish why and how a particular political order is legitimate. We will begin with the paradigmatic case of the state, but we will also look at sub-national and international forms of political rule. We will examine and assess the prominent kinds of answers offered to this question: the common good / social welfare, individual freedom / natural rights, the social contract, and the democratic ideal of equality. Readings will include philosophers such as Plato, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, as well as contemporary theorists such as Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, and Joseph Raz.

What does it mean to develop a critical reading of a literary text (or artwork or film)? What is the object, the logic, the justification of critical judgment? This question – or package of questions –has been raised since antiquity (Aristotle), but has become especially pressing since historical variation emerged into the foreground of aesthetic consideration in the course of the nineteenth century. How can we understand the act of criticism in the absence of clearly formulated norms? If innovation predominates in literary and artistic production, then what is the critic to base her judgment on? In this class, seminar we will examine this question (and its various solutions) as it unfolds from Kant (Critique of the Power of Judgment) to Cavell, with such intermediate stations along the way as Friedrich Schlegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. The seminar will also consider para dogmatic examples of criticism (e.g., Auerbach, Frye, Barthes), while examining the very idea of a classic.

This course continues the development of a new analytical and phenomenological approach to the relationship between revelation and reason (revelatio et ratio), between theology and philosophy, as they are constructed in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought, and in close relationship to their patristic precursors.  Specific themes to be engaged include: relevation as paradox ; the different forms of knowledge implied in ratio (with discussion of Scheleiermacher, Hegel, Spinoza, Kant and Fichte); and the role of the Trinity between relevation and reason (with particular attention to Basil and Augustine, as well as Hegel, Schelling and von Balthasar). (II)

This course will have four foci: 1) a close reading of the verba ipsissima of Philosophical Investigations and a handful of closely related writings by Wittgenstein; 2) an overview of the history of the reception of the book and some of the most influential readings it has occasioned; 3) a discussion of a handful of recent debates in the secondary literature on some its most contested sequences of sections – including those on ostensive definition, the critique of Wittgenstein’s early work, the nature of philosophy, rule-following, practices/forms of life, the so-called private language argument, the nature of first-person authority, and the relations between meaning and use, inner and outer, criteria and mental states, sensations and discursive forms of mindedness; 4) an assessment of how best to interpret the overall aims, methods, and teachings that confer unity on the work as a whole, with special attention to the conception of philosophy at work in the Philosophical Investigations . Throughout the course, we will seek to evaluate some of the most influential options put forward in the secondary literature regarding how to read the book, with a special focus on various aspects of the controversy surrounding so-called “quietest” and “anti-quietest” interpretations of the aims and methods of the work. Readings will include texts by Albritton, Anscombe, Baker, Brandom, Browne, Cavell, Child, Cook, Diamond, Goldfarb, Hacker, Kripke, Kuusela, Malcolm, McDowell, Pitcher, Schulte, Stroud, and Wright. (III)

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

An exploration of some of the central questions in metaethics, moral theory, and applied ethics. These questions include the following: are there objective moral truths, as there are (as it seems) objective scientific truths? If so, how can we come to know these truths? Should we make the world as good as we can, or are there moral constraints on what we can do that are not a function of the consequences of our actions? Is the best life a maximally moral life? What distribution of goods in a society satisfies the demands of justice? Can beliefs and desires be immoral, or only actions? What is “moral luck”? What is courage? (A)

This course explores the question ‘What is art?’ when applied to visual works of art. Another way of forming the question is: ‘What differentiates a work of art from something which is not a work of art?’. The course follows several attempts to answer this question including the representational, expressive, formal, emotive, conventional and historic theories. In the second part of the course, we will address the question: ‘How do we best understand a work of art?’. We will see how these questions are related. Each topic in this course will focus on a single work of art so that the philosophical reading will be understood and evaluated in light of a guided analysis of the work in question.

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.

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.