German Idealism

Topic: Aristotle’s Physics (instructor: A. Brooks)
By Aristotle’s time, the intelligibility (and even the possibility) of a natural world had come under widespread philosophical attack. Aristotle is the first philosopher to defend the science of nature against these attacks, and at the same time the first philosopher to develop a systematic understanding of change and the natural world. This course is a reading of selections from Aristotle’s Physics, with the aim of touchng on all of its major themes, and investigating in depth some of Aristotle’s most important theses. Our reading of the Physics will be structured around four challenges to the possibility of a natural science: the Eleatic dilemma, Zeno’s puzzles about change, Plato’s ‘moment of change’ problem, and the problem of how causal chains can terminate. We will work out the details of Aristotle’s solutions to these problems, with particular attention to how they are related, and how his solutions contribute to his conception of nature.

Topic: Nietzsche On Skepticism, Nihilism, and the Affirmation of Life (instructor: R. Eichorn)

Nietzsche famously declared that he “distrust[s] all systematizers... The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” This has not deterred any number of commentators from trying to find some kind of philosophical system in what Alexander Nehamas has referred to as the “dazzling obscurity” of Nietzsche’s texts. In this course, we will explore the idea that the unity of Nietzsche’s thought (to the extent that it is unified) derives not from a philosophical doctrine or principle (such as the will to power), nor from a system built up of such doctrines or principles, but rather from a preoccupation with a set of interrelated cultural and existential crises. The catch-all term for these crises is nihilism. In the first half of the course, we will explore nihilism historically, by tracing Nietzsche’s account of (a) the socio-evolutionary emergence of the ‘human,’ (b) the rise of philosophy and Judeo–Christianity, and finally (c) the triumph of what Nietzsche calls the ‘ascetic ideal.’ In the second half of the course, we will explore the ambivalent place of philosophical skepticism in Nietzsche’s thought, specifically, its role as both a symptom of and the cure for nihilism—as both a negation and an affirmation of life.

Topic: Gilles Deleuze: Difference and Repetition (instructor: A. Werner)

There is an obvious fact which has played an important role in philosophy: the fact that when we think about the world, it is indeed the world which figures in our thoughts. Many philosophers – for example, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John McDowell – claim that making sense of this fact involves appealing to the irreducibly conceptual structure of thought. According to these philosophers, that the order of thinking and the order of the world are in some important sense the same is spelled out at the most fundamental level in terms of our ability to think about the world using concepts. Because of this, each of them attempts to overcome the skepticism-inducing idea of a sub-conceptual interface between thought and the world it thinks about. Like many other philosophers, Gilles Deleuze also aims to make sense of the fact that the order of thinking and the order of the world are the same. However, unlike the philosophers mentioned in the previous paragraph, he seeks to do so precisely by identifying a sub-conceptual realm which appears as a pre-conceptual element of thought and a non-conceptualizable element of the world. The pre-conceptual element of thought which he identifies is not some kind of skepticism-inducing interface between the world and our thinking of it: rather, it is one side of a sub-conceptual realm which is common to both thought and the world. Deleuze's work is immensely exciting because he agrees with the philosophers mentioned above that positing a sub-conceptual interface between thought and the world is philosophically disastrous, while nevertheless affirming that there is a philosophical explanation of the common origin of the structure of thought and the world which appeals to the sub-conceptual. A fascinating consequence which he draws is that thought and the will are not as such aimed at the true/the good. Thought and the will can aim at the true/the good, but this is not how they are most fundamentally constituted. The result is an a priori account of both the actuality and the necessity of false thoughts and bad actions. We will spend the course reading Deleuze's book Difference and Repetition in the hopes of understanding his arguments for the sub-conceptual and for the rejection of the image of thought and the will as true/good. To assist us in this project, we will occasionally draw upon secondary literature (from authors like Levi Bryant, Henry Somers-Hall, and Paul Patton) and we will also occasionally read selections from other writings by Deleuze (especially The Logic of Sense). Questions we will explore include: Are there sub-conceptual differences and repetitions? Are the concepts of difference and repetition intelligible independently of an account of conceptual structure? Can they be used to ground an account of thought's conceptual structure? Does the attempt to find a sub-conceptual element of thought and the world devolve into skepticism? Does Deleuze want us to give up on the projects of thinking true thoughts and performing good actions? If not, how are we able to think truly and act well on his view? Finally, at the end of the course we will consider Deleuze's view of philosophy by looking at selections from the book What is Philosophy? (by Deleuze and Felix Guattari). One of the first things that strikes any reader of Deleuze is how fluid his terminology and arguments appear to be. This fluidity seems to be in some kind of important relationship to his philosophical theory, which attempts to explain the pre-conceptual fluidity of thought and the world. Nevertheless, his work is full of arguments which employ concepts. If philosophy is supposed to be in contact with a sub-conceptual realm, how should we evaluate it? What kind of argumentative resources should it draw upon? What is its task? A note about philosophical pre-requisites: Deleuze's writing is difficult, principally because he draws on many different sources in D&R (both philosophical – Duns Scotus, Kant, Nietzsche, etc. – and non-philosophical – different novelists, painters, biologists, and mathematicians, as well as Freud, Tarde, Saussure, etc.). This course will not presuppose any prior knowledge of the philosophical and non-philosophical traditions from which Deleuze draws, or any prior knowledge of the philosophical terrain (France in the 60's) in which Deleuze wrote. Antecedent familiarity with the traditions Deleuze is in dialogue with may allows students to explore connections between Deleuze's work and the work of others more fully, but it is neither necessary nor expected. The content of the course only presupposes an interest in the philosophical project of explaining the relationship between mind and world.

The philosophical ideas and methods of Immanuel Kant’s “critical” philosophy set off a revolution that reverberated throughout the 19th century. The only reaction it did not elicit was one of indifference. Kant’s revolution polarized the philosophical community, meeting with eager extensions as well as intense and varied resistance – and often both within a single thinker’s response. This class will seek to understand the nature of Kant’s philosophical innovations and the principle sources of his successors’ (dis-)satisfaction with them. Kant’s central philosophical achievement was double-edged. He simultaneously celebrated human Reason as the supreme cognitive faculty while nevertheless setting for it sensible limits that were, in certain ways, far more restrictive than anyone had previously envisaged. In the practical sphere, Reason is identified as the original source of all moral principles, the wellspring of all goodness and freedom. Yet as sensible, libidinal beings, we humans are subject to desires and modes of self-deception which threaten to undermine the efficacy of reason in determining our will and which occlude our modes of self-assessment and cloud our conscience.In the theoretical sphere, human Reason not only interrogates nature, but shapes and constitutes the very structure of natural phenomena. Reason dictates the principles that govern the knowable world. Yet for precisely this reason, all our knowledge is restricted to what Reason helps to constitute: we know only appearances, but have no cognitive access to things in themselves.
This class will pursue the import and impact of Kant’s thought in the theoretical sphere, as subsequent thinkers grapple with and react to Kant’s idea that, though Reason helps to constitute the structure of the knowable, there is a realm of things in themselves of which we are necessarily ignorant. Fichte will urge that a proper appreciation of the self-conscious nature of Reason shows that nothing can extend beyond its ken. Hegel will likewise accept the preeminence of Reason, but suggest that it has a historical and interpersonal basis which afflicts it with a logical series of challenges that must be resolved before absolute knowledge is possible. And Nietzsche will argue that the claims of Reason, though legitimate, are life-denying in demonstrating our ultimate ignorance and insignificance and thus require revaluation and artistic reinterpretation in order to sustain the human spirit they epitomize.

A discussion of the third and final part of Hegel’s Science of Logic. (V)

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.

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.

Our goal in this course will be to read through and understand at least the first five chapters of Hegel’s revolutionary book. Main topics will include Hegel’s new conception of philosophy and philosophical methodology, his agreements and disagreements with Kant, and the nature of self-consciousness. Undergraduates should have some background in philosophy; a knowledge of Kant would be especially helpful. (V)

In this seminar and a second seminar to be taught in 2015 I shall present a new reading of Nietzsche’s most famous work. Thus Spoke Zarathustra combines philosophy and poetry, wisdom and prophecy, solitude and politics, speech and deed, preaching in riddles and parody of the Gospel. The work is a challenge to faith in revelation and a task for philosophical interpretation. In the spring of 2014 I shall interpret books I and II. Books III and IV I shall teach in the spring of 2015. This procedure may be justified in light of Nietzsche’s own procedure: He published each of the books before the following book was written and in fact without announcing that one, two or even three books would follow the first one. I shall use the English translation by Graham Parkes, Oxford World’s Classics (ISBN 0199537097). Those who can read the text in German should know that I use the Colli/Montinari edition (Kritische Studienausgabe, Bd. 4, DTV, ISBN 3423301546). The seminar will take place in Foster 505 on Monday/Wednesday, 10:30am-12:50pm during the first five weeks of the term (March 31-April 30, 2014).

Topic: What is a “Science of Logic” for Hegel? (instructor: T. Evnen)
This course is designed to introduce students to the philosophical aims and method of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Hegel often referred to the Logic as his most important work; by providing Hegel’s account of certain fundamental concepts—his concept of the concept, his account of self-consciousness and pure knowledge, and his idea of “absolute method”—the Logic serves both as a statement of what, for Hegel, philosophy is and, at least in a certain sense, as the ground upon which his philosophical system rests. Unfortunately, however, the Logic also has a strong claim to being Hegel’s most difficult work. We will attempt to ameliorate this difficulty a bit by beginning with an oblique approach to the text that situates it in its philosophical context. Specifically, we will seek to understand the Logic as a response to a determinate set of philosophical concerns that Hegel took himself to find in Kant—an approach to the text that is  made possible by the fact that Hegel himself evidently understood the Logic not only as the culminating text of his own philosophical system, but also as the culmination of a philosophical project inaugurated by Kant.In particular, we will develop the relationship between Hegel’s “speculative logic” and Kant’s “transcendental logic” by examining three lines of thought in Kant: 1) Kant’s account of spontaneity (and of the relationship between understanding and sensibility) in the B-Deduction of the First Critique; 2) Kant’s transcendental idealism as it is presented and motivated in certain passages of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Dialectic; and, 3) Kant’s treatment of the idea of an “intuitive understanding” in §77 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Any one of these topics could rightly be the subject of its own course, but of necessity our concern here will be to focus narrowly on the difficulties and insights that Hegel himself finds in them. (Our narrow focus also means that prior familiarity with Kant’s philosophy will not be presupposed).In the latter half of the course, we will approach the Logic directly. We will orient ourselves by beginning with selections from the introductory materials (as well as a few of the concluding passages) of both the Encyclopedia Logic and the Science of Logic. These are the places in the text that contain Hegel’s most explicit reflections on his philosophical aims and methodology. From there, we will dive into the thick of the text and examine (as “case studies”) Hegel’s treatment of the progression from teleology to life to cognition.

Topic: Logic and Thought (instructor: G. Nir)

How does logic relate to thought? A course in Elementary Logic teaches us formal methods of evaluating arguments, but does it purport to tell us anything about how we actually reason?  Through a discussion of central issues in the philosophy of logic, this course will explore ways in which this question may receive a positive answer. We will concern ourselves particularly with the kind of philosophy of mind that logicians like Frege and Wittgenstein took themselves to offer.   The course has four parts. We will start by looking at the conception of logic advocated by Frege and Wittgenstein, according to which logic is primarily concerned with thought, its structure, form, uses and laws.  In the second part of the course, we will ask whether puzzles which beset formal logic must also plague thought, inasmuch as the later is understood as endowed with logical form. We will then try to capture what is unique in the concern of logic with thought by contrasting it with the kinds of concern that science, in particular psychology, has. Finally, we will look at two other approaches to the relation of logic and thought which differ markedly from the one we developed so far, and contrast their virtues with what we will call the constitutive conception of logic.

Topic: What is a “Science of Logic” for Hegel? (instructor: T. Evnen)
This course is designed to introduce students to the philosophical aims and method of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Hegel often referred to the Logic as his most important work; by providing Hegel’s account of certain fundamental concepts—his concept of the concept, his account of self-consciousness and pure knowledge, and his idea of “absolute method”—the Logic serves both as a statement of what, for Hegel, philosophy is and, at least in a certain sense, as the ground upon which his philosophical system rests. Unfortunately, however, the Logic also has a strong claim to being Hegel’s most difficult work. We will attempt to ameliorate this difficulty a bit by beginning with an oblique approach to the text that situates it in its philosophical context. Specifically, we will seek to understand the Logic as a response to a determinate set of philosophical concerns that Hegel took himself to find in Kant—an approach to the text that is  made possible by the fact that Hegel himself evidently understood the Logic not only as the culminating text of his own philosophical system, but also as the culmination of a philosophical project inaugurated by Kant.In particular, we will develop the relationship between Hegel’s “speculative logic” and Kant’s “transcendental logic” by examining three lines of thought in Kant: 1) Kant’s account of spontaneity (and of the relationship between understanding and sensibility) in the B-Deduction of the First Critique; 2) Kant’s transcendental idealism as it is presented and motivated in certain passages of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Dialectic; and, 3) Kant’s treatment of the idea of an “intuitive understanding” in §77 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Any one of these topics could rightly be the subject of its own course, but of necessity our concern here will be to focus narrowly on the difficulties and insights that Hegel himself finds in them. (Our narrow focus also means that prior familiarity with Kant’s philosophy will not be presupposed).In the latter half of the course, we will approach the Logic directly. We will orient ourselves by beginning with selections from the introductory materials (as well as a few of the concluding passages) of both the Encyclopedia Logic and the Science of Logic. These are the places in the text that contain Hegel’s most explicit reflections on his philosophical aims and methodology. From there, we will dive into the thick of the text and examine (as “case studies”) Hegel’s treatment of the progression from teleology to life to cognition.

Topic: Logic and Thought (instructor: G. Nir)

How does logic relate to thought? A course in Elementary Logic teaches us formal methods of evaluating arguments, but does it purport to tell us anything about how we actually reason?  Through a discussion of central issues in the philosophy of logic, this course will explore ways in which this question may receive a positive answer. We will concern ourselves particularly with the kind of philosophy of mind that logicians like Frege and Wittgenstein took themselves to offer.   The course has four parts. We will start by looking at the conception of logic advocated by Frege and Wittgenstein, according to which logic is primarily concerned with thought, its structure, form, uses and laws.  In the second part of the course, we will ask whether puzzles which beset formal logic must also plague thought, inasmuch as the later is understood as endowed with logical form. We will then try to capture what is unique in the concern of logic with thought by contrasting it with the kinds of concern that science, in particular psychology, has. Finally, we will look at two other approaches to the relation of logic and thought which differ markedly from the one we developed so far, and contrast their virtues with what we will call the constitutive conception of logic.