2022-2023

The three leading schools of the Hellenistic era (starting in Greece in the late fourth century B. C. E. and extending through the second century C. E. in Rome) – Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics – produced philosophical work of lasting value, frequently neglected because of the fragmentary nature of the Greek evidence and people’s (unjustified) contempt for Roman philosophy.  We will study in a detailed and philosophically careful way the major ethical arguments of all three schools.  Topics to be addressed include: the nature and role of pleasure; the role of the fear of death in human life; other sources of disturbance (such as having definite ethical beliefs?); the nature of the emotions and their role in a moral life; the nature of appropriate action; the meaning of the injunction to “live in accordance with nature.”  If time permits we will say something about Stoic political philosophy and its idea of global duty.  Major sources (read in English) will include the three surviving letters of Epicurus and other fragments; the skeptical writings of Sextus Empiricus; the presentation of Stoic ideas in the Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius and the Roman philosophers Cicero and Seneca. (I) (III)

"Epicurus's old questions are yet unanswered. Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?" (Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)This course will consider the challenge posed by the existence of evil to the rationality of traditional theistic belief. Drawing on both classic and contemporary readings, we will analyze atheistic arguments from evil, and attempts by theistic philosophers to construct "theodicies" and "defenses" in response to these arguments, including the "free-will defense," "soul-making theodicies," and "suffering God theodicies." We will also consider critiques of such theodicies as philosophically confused, morally depraved, or both; and we will discuss the problem of divinely commanded or enacted evil (for example the doctrine of hell). (A) 

The history of anarchism, or cooperative politics without leaders, is itself anarchic, coming in a rich diversity of forms and contexts.  But from Bakunin’s anarchist critique of Marx and Kropotkin’s re-reading of evolutionary cooperation, through the Haymarket martyrs, Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, and Helen Keller, down to Colin Ward, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Ursula La Guin, and David Graeber, anarchism has repeatedly generated electrifying forms of political critique and mobilization, with political and ethical imaginaries that proved visionary.  This course will explore the rich legacy of anarchist movements and philosophies, emphasizing how relevant they are to addressing the global political crises of the world today, particularly in the form of Green and Eco-anarchism, crucial forces in the movements for environmental justice and animal liberation. (A)

What is “civic engagement” and why should colleges, universities, and other educational institutions practice and encourage it? How, for example, does the University of Chicago’s Office of Civic Engagement define the theory and practice of civic engagement, fitting it within the University’s core mission and valorizing certain approaches to it for students, faculty, staff, and the University as a whole? What alternative models might be available? And what are the limitations of such institutionalized efforts, as highlighted in efforts to “decolonize” institutions of higher education? When, in short, does such institutionalized civic engagement conflict with efforts to move beyond the discourses of diversity and civic education to embrace more critical perspectives on the settler colonial ideologies informing educational institutions in current neoliberal societies? This course will be developed in active collaboration with the UChicago Civic Knowledge Project, which for two decades has explored alternatives visions of civic friendship on Chicago’s South Side. (A) (I) (IV)