2022-2023

This course will provide a rapid-fire survey of the philosophical sources of contemporary literary and critical theory.  We will begin with a brief discussion of the sort of humanism at issue in the critique—accounts of human life and thought that treat the individual human being as the primary unit for work in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.  This kind of humanism is at the core of contemporary common sense.  It is, to that extent, indispensable in our understanding of how to move around in the world and get along with one another.  That is why we will conduct critique, rather than plain criticism, in this course: in critique, one remains indebted to the system under critical scrutiny, even while working to understand its failings and limitations.  Our tour of thought produced in the service of critique will involve work by Hegel, Marx, Gramsci, Freud, Fanon, Lacan, and Althusser. We will conclude with a couple of pieces of recent work that draws from these sources.  The aim of the course is to provide students with an opportunity to engage with some extraordinarily influential work that continues to inform humanistic inquiry. (A)

In this course we will read, write, and think about Kant's ethics.  After giving careful attention to the arguments in the Second Critique, portions of the Third Critique, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Metaphysics of Morals, and several other primary texts, we will conclude by working through some contemporary neo-Kantian moral philosophy, paying close attention to work by Christine Korsgaard, David Velleman, Stephen Engstrom, and others. (IV)

Plato and Aristotle are paradigms of the intellectual attempt to know reality in some objective sense. They are also entangled in their social and material circumstances as historical individuals. The primary aim of this class is to survey a series of topics in which these two strands come together: how Plato and Aristotle’s pursuit of authoritative knowledge both challenges and reproduces their social and material circumstances. Topics include leisure and freedom in Plato’s epistemology; Plato’s philosophical engagement with sex and gender, and racial and ethnic difference; Aristotle’s application of natural teleology to social hierarchy, and his philosophical engagement with reproduction and sexual difference. We will also read from related Greek intellectual texts (such as the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places), social histories of ancient Greece, and contemporary epistemology. (III)

This course provides a historical survey of the philosophy of time. We begin with the problems of change, being and becoming as formulated in Ancient Greece by Parmenides and Zeno, and Aristotle’s attempted resolution in the Physics by providing the first formal theory of time. The course then follows theories of time through developments in physics and philosophy up to the present day. Along the way we will take in Descartes’ theory of continuous creation, Newton’s Absolute Time, Leibniz’s and Mach’s relational theories, Russell’s relational theory, Broad’s growing block, Whitehead’s epochal theory, McTaggart’s A, B and C theories, Prior’s tense logic, Belnap’s branching time, Einstein’s relativity theory and theories of quantum gravity. (B) (II)

This course introduces students to contemporary debates among political philosophers about the value of equality. We begin with arguments for and against distributive equality, the view that justice demands that everyone possess equal amounts of some good or bundle of goods. We then examine arguments for and against relational egalitarianism, the view that our relationships to one another ought ideally to be free of hierarchy. (A) (I)

An advanced study of the theoretical philosophy of the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume. The focus of this course will be a careful reading of Book 1 of the Treatise on Human Nature and the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Some topics of the course include: Hume’s empiricism(s), Hume on abstract objects, existence and negation, Hume’s theory of causation, Hume’s theory of belief, and Hume’s relation to skepticism. (IV)

This course critically examines contemporary theories of justice from an ecological perspective. We will begin by examining work in ecological economics that situates the economy in nature and challenges contemporary approaches to capitalist development. We will then consider the extent to which theories of justice can address problems related to resource depletion, sustainability, and economic growth. Readings include texts by Rawls, Armstrong, Kolers, and Stilz. In the final section of the course, we will consider approaches that seek to chart a new way forward for thinking about economic justice, including theories of degrowth and movements to revive the commons. (A) (I)

An investigation of the applied ethics of technology in the 21st century. Fundamental debates in applied ethics are paired with recent technological case studies. Topics covered include moral dilemmas, privacy, consent, human enhancement, distributed responsibility, and technological risks. Case studies include self-driving cars, geo-engineering, Internet privacy, genetic enhancement, Twitter, autonomous warfare, nuclear war, and the Matrix. (A) (I)

Whereas philosophers of Antiquity and the Middle Ages generally hold that good conduct is required for happiness, modern moral philosophy conceives of it as required by law-like obligation. Anscombe has famously argued that such a conception makes no sense independently of belief in a divine law-giver. Is she right? Or should philosophy rather take seriously the experience of “feeling duty-bound” to keep promises, help people in need, work conscientiously etc. and conclude that there is such a thing as moral obligation independently of a legislating authority? What does the Natural Law tradition say about this? What is actually involved in the idea of a moral Ought? Can there be absolute practical necessities? or unconditional obligations without sanction? Would we have reason to comply? How can the content of a “moral law” be known? Are happiness-oriented ethics definitely incompatible with ideas of such a law? (A) (I)

This course will center on a close reading of significant parts of Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, a famous set of meditations on knowledge, faith, and human nature, culminating in his famous “wager” for Christian religious faith. In the first half of the course, we will begin by providing some intellectual context, with selections from Montaigne’s essays (“That to philosophize is to learn how to die,” “Of physiognomy,” and excerpts from “Apology for Raymond Sebond”) and Descartes’s Discourse on Method (Parts 1-4). We will also briefly consider the writings of Pascal’s sister Jacqueline (“On the Mystery of the Death of our Lord Jesus Christ”) together with Pascal’s “Memorial” to understand Pascal’s own religious conversion, followed by a discussion of his “Discussion with Monsieur Saucy” and “The Art of Persuasion” to contrast his method in philosophy with that of Descartes. The second half of the course will then be devoted to a close reading of selections from the Pensées, chosen to emphasize the themes most important for a proper critical understanding of the wager argument.