2021-2022

What does it mean to say that some action was wrong? And what are we supposed to do about it? This course takes a closer look at wrongdoing and what comes next, whether it’s morally permissible or abhorrent. We will explore topics in theories of punishment, moral repair, restorative justice, forgiveness, and revenge in order to map out the normative terrain we face as moral agents living in a world with wrongdoing. Emphasis will be placed on first-personal accounts of these phenomena, including memoirs written after the Holocaust, accounts of colonialism, and testimony from within the U.S. prison industrial complex. We will explore these phenomena using theoretical frameworks from philosophers including Kant, Mill, Margaret Walker, Angela Davis, Jean Hampton, Martha Nussbaum, and Simone de Beauvoir. (A)

Bresson’s films are known for their minimal and highly original style, the avoidance of any reliance on theatrical conventions, the use of nonprofessional actors (“models,” he called them), unusual and “unnatural” editing techniques, distinctive pacing, and for its themes of grace, redemption, fate, moral severity, and several other philosophical and religious issues in the lives of the characters. This course will explore Bresson’s innovations as aiming at a new form of contemplative cinema, one in which style is a matter of a kind of poetic thinking (as understood by Martin Heidegger), a reflective interrogation of philosophical issues that for which traditional philosophy is inadequate. We shall watch and discuss his films: Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945); The Diary of a Country Priest (1951); A Man Escaped (1956); Pickpocket (1959); Au hazard Balthasar (1966); Mouchette (1967); Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971) and L’argent (1983). Readings will include, among others, Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematograph and Bresson on Bresson; Paul Schrader, The Transcendental Style in Film, selected essays about particular films, and selections from Heidegger.

There has been significant concern, in recent years, about the threat of "fake news" and "disinformation." Most of this discussion has concerned deliberate lies told for political reasons. Those who spread fake news, however, rarely do so deliberately; many believe what they say, however obvious the falsehood of their claims may seem to outsiders. Beliefs of this sort are ideological in nature. Philosophers have studied the social phenomenon of ideology for hundreds of years. In this course, we will examine a number of historical (e.g. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Adorno, Gramsci, Althusser) and contemporary (e.g. Haslanger, Stanley, Honneth, Jaeggi, Railton, Leiter) accounts of ideology. In doing so, we will try to come to terms with the reality of ideology: What is it? How does it relate to truth? Can it be avoided? If so, how? All texts will be read in English translation. (A)

In this course, we will examine the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, with the aim of arriving at a cursory overview of his thought. We will take as our guiding thread a paradox concerning the value of truth that arises in the course of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality: when, as in scientific inquiry, we take it as a rule that we should always seek the truth, we presuppose that we are the kind of creatures to whom rules can apply (i.e. morally responsible persons); but scientific inquiry, in its tendency to disenchant the world and subvert our traditional self-understanding, threatens to undermine this idea. What if truth-seeking drives us to the conclusion that we are not, in fact, morally responsible persons? What then of truth? All texts will be read in English translation.

Topic: Self and Other

In this course we consider three questions about other minds in relation to the self. First, we will try to understand the threat of solipsism--what does entertaining the thought of being the only minded being in existence amount to? How must one think of oneself and the kind of mind one has if there are no other minds? Second, we consider the question of how it is possible to have thought about other minds; or, what the difference is between thought about, for instance, inanimate objects, and thought about other human beings. What explains that our ability to distinguish these doesn't seem to be something learned? What does that tell us about the kind of mind we have? Third, we examine the basis for saying that others have certain beliefs, desires, and emotions. How do we go about making these psychological ascriptions to others? Are these attributions limited by our own experiences? How might one's understanding of others' attitudes contribute to one's self-conception? Through these three topics we will investigate what reflection on our understanding of other minds means for our understanding of ourselves.

Topic: Reality and Truth: Plato and the Problem of Being

We will confront foundational questions about the nature of truth and reality through an intensive study of Plato’s Sophist. Questions about what is real are familiar to us. We wonder whether people are being fake with us, or whether God exists, or whether there is really such a ‘thing’ as justice. But there is also a prior and more fundamental question: What does it mean for something to be real? This is known in philosophy as ‘The Problem of Being.’ Plato’s Sophist is one of the Western philosophical tradition’s most searching attempts to answer this question. We will try to follow in Plato’s footsteps. Major themes of the course will include: reality vs. mere appearance; authenticity vs. pretending; truth and falsehood; and the difference between beings (entities, things) and their being. Readings will include works by John McDowell, Lesley Brown, and Martin Heidegger.

Topic: The First Person Perspective

It is often remarked that one occupies a unique perspective on oneself, that, paradigmatically, one relates to oneself in a very different manner than one does to others. There are various ways of bringing out what is unique about this perspective. We will explore two in particular in this course. The first involves the idea of ‘first person authority’; the second involves the idea of ‘immunity to error through misidentification’. We will examine a number of philosophical debates surrounding these themes. Some questions to be explored: 

Are first-personally authoritative self-ascriptions (e.g. ‘I think it will rain tomorrow’) to be understood as cases of self-knowledge? If so, how are we to account for such knowledge? If not, what alternatives do we have for accounting for these self-ascriptions and the authority with which they are made? 

Does ‘I’ refer? If so, to what does it refer, and how does it manage to refer to it? 

How does the first person perspective differ from, and how is it related to, both the second and the third person perspectives? 

Readings will include selections from: Anscombe, Bar-On, McDowell, Moran, Rödl, Strawson, and Wittgenstein.

Topic: Trust

Trust plays a crucial role in our interpersonal relationships and our ability to undertake complex activities with others. This class, broken into three parts, will survey some recent literature devoted to this topic. In the first we will investigate the metaphysical nature of trust. Is it a belief, an attitude, an emotion, or something else? We will ask what the relationship is between trust and trustworthiness; whether trust can be willed; and how trust interacts with individual agency. In the second we will investigate the rationality of trust. In particular we will consider how it is that trust or trusting relationships can provide, on the one hand, a valid reason for belief and, on the other, a valid reason to perform some action. In the third part we will draw on some of the insights hopefully gained in the first two to think about some related ethical issues such as epistemic injustice, forgiveness, and collective action. Authors may include: Richard Holton, Pamela Hieronymi, P.F. Strawson, and Annette Baier.

Topic: Practical Reasoning

This course explores the nature of practical reason by examining practical reasoning, its activity. We will examine some accounts that philosophers have given of deliberation and of the so-called practical syllogism or inference; we will consider the relationship between the two and ask what they tell us about practical rationality. In the second half of the course, we will consider the perennial question of whether practical rationality requires acting well, that is, ethically or morally.

What is philosophy? And how can it help us understand – and occasionally answer – questions as wide-ranging as those in ethics, politics, moral psychology, language, feminism, and metaphysics? In this course, we will explore ideas in the history of philosophy in order to acquaint ourselves with the range of topics that can be the proper object of philosophical attention. Using the distinctive features of the discipline, including slow, reflective engagement with ideas, critical attention to argument, and precise analysis of the concepts underlying ordinary thought, we will ask ordinary questions about the world and discover that philosophy is the practice of answering them with a level of rigor and depth that gives us a greater grasp on the world and ourselves. Some of the questions we will explore during the quarter are: Can my goodness be a matter of luck? Why are some bodies declared “normal,” some “broken,” and some food? What is gender? And is there anything philosophical we can say about the pandemic?