PHIL

From Plato to the present, notions of happiness have been at the core of heated debate in ethics and politics. Is happiness the ultimate good for human beings, the essence of the good life, or is morality somehow prior to it? Can it be achieved by all, or only by a fortunate few? These are some of the questions that this course engages, with the help of both classic and contemporary texts from philosophy, literature, and the social sciences. This course includes various video presentations and other materials stressing visual culture. (A)

Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter. Pass/Fail.

Does Judaism recognize an ethics independent of Halakhah (Jewish law)? What are the interrelations, conceptually and normatively, between ethics and Halakhah? How should we understand the conflicts between ethics and Halakhah, morality and religion? How does the Jewish tradition conceive of the notion of mitzvah (commandment), and what is the relationship between interpersonal mitzvot and mitzvot between human beings and God? What are the modes of Halakhic reasoning distinct from ethical argumentation? These topics will be considered through a study of the work of Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Aharon Lichtenstein, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, David Weiss Halivni, Daniel Sperber, and Emmanuel Lévinas. Specific examples to be discussed may include the status of women, prayer, and repentance.

This course will trace the history of the philosophical controversy over the analytic/synthetic distinction from Carnap and Klein through contemporary defenses by Gillian Russell and others.  (II) (III)

Readings from Sellars, McDowell, Travis, and Boyle, among others. (III)

This course explores the nature of process of cultural evolution. After establishing a background on the characteristics of biological evolution, we consider topics in cultural evolution that explore similarities and differences between processes of biological and cultural evolution, and theoretical and conceptual innovations necessary to deal with the latter, using a variety of approaches and methodologies, including agent-based modeling, “big data” approaches, and case studies. These will include topics like: the nature of inheritance, the limits of ‘memes’, the role of cognitive development, the coevolution of cognition and lithic technology, the scaffolding and evolution of social support, institutions, organizations and firms, the structure of scientific communities, entrenchment and the emergence of conventions and standards, the role of technology, horizontal vs. vertical transmission, multichannel inheritance, economic markets, the nature of innovation, and the role of history.

This seminar will be devoted mostly to the reading of texts of Sartre. Our goal will be to try to define the meaning of Sartre’s project of elaborating an existential psychoanalysis. In what sense can it be an alternative to Freudian or Lacanian psychoanalysis? We will try to follow Sartre in the elaboration of such a project in reading texts in which Sartre develops an existential psychoanalysis of French writers like Baudelaire, Genet and Flaubert.

The theme for 2015-16 is “Race and Law.” Speakers will include (in addition to Darby): Elizabeth Anderson (Michigan), Justin Driver (Chicago), Sally Haslanger (MIT), Charles Mills (Northwestern), Michele Moody-Adams (Columbia), Tommie Shelby (Harvard). Note: This is a seminar/workshop many of whose participants are faculty from various related disciplines. It admits approximately ten students. Its aim is to study, each year, a topic that arises in both philosophy and the law and to ask how bringing the two fields together may yield mutual illumination. Most sessions are led by visiting speakers, from either outside institutions or our own faculty, who circulate their papers in advance. The session consists of a brief introduction by the speaker, followed by initial questioning by the two faculty coordinators, followed by general discussion, in which students are given priority. Several sessions involve students only, and are led by the instructors. Students write a 20-25 page seminar paper at the end of the year. The course satisfies the Law School Substantial Writing Requirement. Students must enroll for all three quarters to receive credit. Students are admitted by permission of the two instructors. They should submit a c.v. and a statement (reasons for interest in the course, relevant background in law and/or philosophy) to the instructors by e mail by September 20. Usual participants include graduate students in philosophy, political science, and divinity, and law students. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

Amartya Sen is, of course, a distinguished economist, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize.  But he is also a philosopher whose philosophical thought informs his economic writings and who has long defended the importance of philosophy for economic thought.  This course will study the philosophical aspects of his thought, not attempting to separate them from his economic contributions, which would be wrong, but attempting to focus on the specific contributions Sen has been able to make to economics in virtue of being a philosopher.  We will begin by studying two distinct though related strands of his thought: work on choice, welfare, and measurement, and work on development.  We continue with his influential critique of Utilitarianism on the nature of preference and value, and the importance of equality.  We will then devote substantial time to The Idea of Justice, a major contribution to political philosophy.  Finally, we will examine more recent writings on Indian rationalist philosophy and on religious identity. (I)

This seminar will be a close reading of Kierkegaard's classic text, written under the pseudonym of "Anti-Climacus". Among the topics to be discussed are the nature and forms of despair, hopelessness and hopefulness, faith, sickness, guilt and sin. (V)